The residents of Public Hospital District No. 1 weren’t well-served Tuesday night by the district’s commissioners.

They met for just over an hour, debating and casting mostly 3-2 votes on resolutions dealing with matters that board President Dr. Paul Joos himself said may be outside the “purview” of the board.

There was one matter that clearly rests within the purview of the board – oversight of the district’s tax dollars – that come up before the board.

The hospital district is facing a $3.3 million shortfall in the property taxes it collects to pay off the debt on bonds used to build such critical health-care facilities as the new emergency services tower.

Jeannine Grinnell, the district’s interim superintendent, asked the board for a sense of where it would like to set the district’s property-tax levy for 2013, so that the budget process could move forward.

The direction ranged all over the board, from lowering the property tax levy to show good faith with voters to leaving it the same. Maybe this was the time for belt-tightening, suggested one.

Grinnell had to point out again – Levy 101 – that the district is obligated to pay back those long-term bonds or face default.

In the end the board’s direction was to leave the property tax levy in 2013 the same as in 2012. Final decisions won’t come until later this year, but this was a chance for Joos and the rest of the new majority to show they had their eyes on the real prize – our tax dollars.

The board had found just 10 minutes or so to thoughtfully discuss those tax dollars. Under Joos’ leadership Tuesday and in earlier meetings, it had found plenty of time to debate those resolutions Joos says probably weren’t within the board’s purview.

Joos has a lot to learn about how to ensure meetings are run legally and how to write resolutions. There’s a reason that decisions of elected bodies are carefully choreographed so they can’t be challenged for procedural miscues.

A newly hired board attorney is helping him learn, at taxpayer expense.

Joos, too, needs to work more closely with Grinnell, his main staff member, to ensure the district’s business is getting done in a timely manner. That would have given commissioners more time to think about the tax levy.

These first few meetings of the board have been an indication the board’s new majority – Joos, Anthony Hemstad and Dr. Aaron Heide – doesn’t understand or chooses to disregard its role in the new strategic alliance with UW Medicine.

I am not saying here that the elected commissioners should abdicate their oversight role of the district’s tax dollars. And I want them to sharpen their pencils when they debate as trustees of Valley Medical Center the medical center’s budget.

Even an independent review of the strategic alliance at more taxpayer expense perhaps isn’t a bad thing, if just to put the matter to rest. At some point trust needs to be put in the system.

Joos doesn’t believe the legal analysis of the strategic alliance was rigorous enough. That’s hard to believe, given the thousands of tax dollars already spent on lawyers to make sure it is legal and doesn’t violate antitrust laws. UW Medicine has an assistant state attorney general on its legal team; the UW signed an agreement it found legal.

“Asked and answered” seems to be a favorite expression of attorneys when they tire of hearing a client asked the same question in a slightly different way because the questioner doesn’t like the answer.

And as the judge says:

It’s time to move on.