Letter to Tim Johnson, Chairman, and Mike Crapo, Ranking Member, of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee - Redevelop Canandaigua VA Campus

Letter

Dear Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Kirk,

As you begin your work on the Fiscal Year 2015 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, we write to request your support for a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) construction program of critical importance to the nation's veterans, the Canandaigua VA Medical Center, located in upstate New York. Therefore, I strongly urge you to maintain the military construction funding requests outlined in the President's Budget.

The Canandaigua VA Medical Center, part of the VA Health Care Network, has been providing inpatient and outpatient care to veterans living in upstate New York since 1933. The Medical Center has been designated as a VA Center of Excellence for research and education of mental health issues at a time when military service members are returning from combat with an unprecedented number reporting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), along with a plethora of combat related physical disabilities. These issues, among other things, have culminated in startling statistics on veteran suicide rates, which the VA reports at 22 per day in 2010. The national VA Suicide/Crisis Hotline call center, located on the Canandaigua campus, has fielded well over 750,000 calls and helped save some 26,000 callers on the brink of taking their own lives since it opened in 2007.

In addition to the mental health concerns following the return of combat troops, the construction will also help reduce the staggering prevalence of homelessness and addiction among the nation's recently returning military members, as well as provide care for the region's aging veteran population from past wars. It will provide six cottage-style nursing care housing facilities, for a total of 120 beds for nursing, hospice, and geropsychiatric care. Additionally, one facility will be redeveloped into a 50-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, and four others will be redeveloped for outpatient services, behavioral health services, and administrative support departments. This modernization will help the VA transform its delivery of health care from a hospital driven health care system to an integrated delivery system that emphasizes a full continuum of care, with a significant shift to outpatient care to optimize efficiency, as well as minimize gaps in safety, security, access, utilization, and space.

In order to provide the level of care to those who have sacrificed so much for this nation, we strongly request your support for the Canandaigua VA Medical Center and urge you to provide $561,800,000, the same as the President's budget request, for the Department of Veterans Affairs to modernize several of the highest ranked VA medical facilities in their major construction projects account. The Canandaigua Project was appropriated $36,580,000 in FY10 for design work including the preparation of a campus-wide master plan, Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, and a formal Environmental Assessment. The total cost of the Canandaigua project, stated in the FY15 President's Budget is $309,500,000, with $122,400,000 requested for FY15. This continued robust funding will provide the necessary resources to update the medical facility to meet the current mental and physical health care demands and provide exceptional service to our military veterans far into the future.

We recognize the difficult budget constraints under which you are working, and appreciate your consideration of our request. With such a large number of veterans returning home only to struggle with mental illness and substance abuse, combined with aging veterans from past conflicts, the Canandaigua VA Medical Center plays an essential role in ensuring the health and prosperity of our veterans now and for generations to come. If we can provide any additional information in support of this request, please do not hesitate to contact me or my staff.

Sincerely,

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