STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
The up-up-upward cost of operating El Centro Community Hospital has forced its reluctant trustees to raise room rates higher than those of the county’s three other hospitals.
Effective this Saturday the cost of a private room goes from the $42 of a year ago to $60.
A two-patient room will be increased from $37 to $54. The greatest increase will be that charged patients in a four-patient room up from $24 to year ago to $50.
Other services will also be increased. New charges for the pediatric ward will be $45 and for the delivery room the rate goes to $60.
Most of the higher rates were brought about by a 12 percent across-the-board wage increase to be given in two increments.
40 years ago
HOLTVILLE — The city’s disenchantment with its long-term arrangement with the California Angels baseball team surfaced Monday at the City Council meeting.
Councilman Lynn Wilson estimated the city lost $7,000 this year in its lease arrangement for the ball team’s complex at Angeltown.
Wilson said the city will meet with Angels officials in a few days to talk about updating the contract. The contract runs until 1980. The Angels have an option to renew it for another five years.
This year’s loss apparently is much smaller than past years. It was offset by a $8,900 check which the Chamber of Commerce presented to the city and another $2,000 donation by Angels supporter Bob Andrews.
The Chamber wants back part of the money, proceeds from a major league game in Holtville and another one in Mexicali.
30 years ago
CALEXICO — Former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso said this morning that the new immigration law has been “oversold” as a solution to the country’s illegal immigration problems.
As long as employers in the United States need cheap labor and economic pressures drive people from poorer countries to this country, the problem of undocumented workers will continue, Reynoso said at the opening of a San Diego State University conference on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
He said the U.S. government unilaterally produced the immigration law without working with representatives from other countries, including Mexico, Canada and Asian countries, to stem the flow of undocumented aliens from those nations.