Pamela Edwards waited on a park bench outside Parkland Memorial Hospital with dozens of other patients who had spilled out of the busy pharmacy department.

JIM MAHONEY/DMN

The Parkland proposition would authorize spending up to $747 million in Dallas County property taxes to build a new hospital across Harry Hines from the current 54-year-old facility.

She had brought her lunch, knowing it would take hours to get her monthly prescriptions filled.

"I need to take my medication with a little food, so I just bring it along with me," the 57-year-old Garland woman said last week.

It's the invariable waiting that has Mrs. Edwards eager to cast an early vote in the Nov. 4 bond election in favor of building the next incarnation of Parkland.

"I like Parkland. It's a good hospital. But they make you wait awhile for everything," said Mrs. Edwards, who was born in the old Parkland on Maple Avenue and gave birth to four children in the current public hospital on Harry Hines Boulevard.

"There are so many people here every day. They deserve a new hospital, a bigger hospital so everybody can spread out a little."

The bond proposition for a new $1.3 billion charity hospital occupies the bottom of Dallas County's crowded general election ballot. (Voters in Addison, Irving and Rowlett will have other propositions to consider as well.)

The countywide Parkland proposition would authorize spending up to $747 million in county property taxes, about 60 percent of the total cost, to build a larger, modern hospital across Harry Hines from the current 54-year-old facility. Hospital revenues and private donations would cover the remainder of the cost.

If approved by voters, the new, larger hospital will open in 2014 and cost about $52.50 more in annual property taxes for owners of a home valued at $150,000. That represents a 13.7 percent increase in the Dallas County Hospital District's tax rate, which has held steady – at 25.4 cents per $100 assessed value – for the past eight years.

This is the first bond election for Parkland since 1980, when voters approved spending $80 million to upgrade the facility. Recent studies have called Parkland "functionally obsolete," with too-small patient rooms, outmoded mechanical systems and not enough space to meet federal standards.

The campaign to replace Parkland is being largely underwritten by the Dallas Citizens Council, a business group that supports a range of civic projects and usually plays an active role in local bond elections. The group expects to contribute about $250,000 in addition to $180,000 donated by individuals and businesses.

"We absolutely believe that this community needs to be prepared to meet the health care needs of the next 50 years," said Donna Halstead, the council's president. "We need this new hospital."

So far, the campaign has consisted of yard signs, radio ads and the occasional community meeting in which Parkland supporters describe the benefits of Dallas having such a safety-net hospital that not only serves indigent patients, but handles half the trauma cases in the county and all of the serious burn patients.

No known organized opposition has surfaced so far. But Parkland officials concede that they have heard more than a few complaints about the hospital's policy of caring for illegal immigrants.

The policy is driven by Parkland's mission to serve the county's indigent population and a federal law that prohibits turning away any patient who comes to the emergency room needing immediate treatment.

"If someone is sick, we take care of them," said Dr. Lauren McDonald, who chairs Parkland's board of managers. "It's the obligation of the federal government in Washington to make the decision about people's immigrant status.

"Don't ask our nurses and doctors to make those decisions."

Dr. Ron Anderson, Parkland's president and chief operating officer, said he frequently hears objections to immunizing immigrant children against polio, whooping cough and tuberculosis, because such shots are not emergency care.

"We haven't seen this stuff spreading in our country in a really long time, but it's just around the corner," he warned.

Complaints about patients coming from other counties to receive care at Parkland also have been voiced at community forums. And questions were raised about 58-year-old Mike Herrera, who died last month in Parkland's overcrowded emergency room after waiting 19 hours for treatment.

"Thirty patients were waiting for a bed," Dr. Anderson said. "We had nowhere to put them. This is an issue of capacity."