Northeast Health System CEO Stephen Laverty last night assured the Cape Ann community that Addison Gilbert Hospital, now integrated into a dual campus system with the larger Beverly Hospital, is here to stay.

"We are not closing Addison Gilbert Hospital," Laverty said in a one-hour presentation to the City Council he sought after the Task Force on the Preservation of Addison Gilbert formulated a set of questions for him about the hospital's services to which he did not respond.

Along with reiterating that core point again and again, at one time saying Addison Gilbert was secure "on our watch," Laverty also announced that Northeast and the city had achieved a feasible partnership plan to bring a community health center to Northeast property adjacent to the Washington Street campus.

He said he hopes the community health center will "be a reality by spring."

Community health centers provide primary health care to the low-income population.

Siting one in Gloucester has long been high on Mayor John Bell's priority list.

The city and Northeast nearly a year ago began earnest negotiations with a nonprofit operator to locate the health center in Gloucester and worked through complex waivers from the federal and state governments to clear legal hurdles.

Laverty said he would brief his trustees at their upcoming meeting on the details of the health center, which he described as "the most vivid example of a public-private collaboration."

It was Laverty's first public appearance in Gloucester since he and his $323 million regional health system three years ago declared Addison Gilbert an endangered adjunct and set about a reorganization of its resources integrated with those at Beverly Hospital.

He was accompanied by Drs. Henry Ramini, chairman of the board of Northeast Health System, and Herbert Bistrong, chairman of the board of Northeast Hospital Corp., and other executives and staff. Also attending were many nurses who have clashed with Laverty and Northeast over contract and service delivery issues.

Margaret O'Malley, a retired nurse, political activist and member of the task force that Sen. Bruce Tarr organized when Addison Gilbert's future was put in doubt three years ago, used the occasion to gather signatures to a petition for submission to the council requiring that either Laverty or an assignee be asked back to the council to answer questions from the community in a public hearing.

O'Malley called last night's event "a step in the right direction."

Laverty also challenged repeated anecdotal claims by nurses and physicians at Addison Gilbert Hospital at recent task force meetings that the hospital was no longer offering off-hours emergency surgery.

This concern seemed validated by an internal memo last July by the head of emergency services at Addison Gilbert that announced "an administrative decision was recently made (to end off-hours surgery) in response to a very low number of cases occurring ... after 6 p.m. or on weekends." The memo was released by the task force in October.

It was this memo that spurred the task force to ask for in-person clarification.

Instead, Laverty offered to speak to the council and issued a statement declaring the memo to have been unauthorized and incorrect.

In his presentation, he said, "We are maintaining 24/7 surgery. We are committed to preserving three things (at Addison Gilbert) - access, safety and quality."

Questioned about the availability of off-hours surgery by Councilors John "Gus" Foote and Alphonse Swekla, Laverty said, "To my knowledge, we have never been unable to take care of life-threatening surgeries (at Addison Gilbert)."

He also asserted the need for Cape Ann, because of its isolation, to have a "robust emergency room."

Northeast rebuilt the emergency department, adapted the long-vacant fourth floor of the hospital to be physicians' suites, recruited three new physicians to settle there and brought other services into the hospital once considered to be more than 40 percent underused.

Laverty cited these investments as evidence the hospital remains essential in the Northeast business plan. Its bane, he said, is the "predatory" marketplace that fights Northeast for its patient-customer base in central Essex County and Cape Ann.

"Downtown Boston in particular is trying to take more and more of the good paying patients," said Laverty in an allusion to the giant Partners Health Care network, anchored by Massachusetts General Hospital, which has exiled Northeast doctors from its physician group payment system and staked a real estate claim in Danvers for a satellite outpatient center not far from Laverty's Beverly campus.

Still, he insisted Northeast is holding its own and remains profitable and strong.

He was chided not to allow communication to dissipate.

"It's been a long time," said Ward 4 Councilor Jackie Hardy. Bell told Laverty the city's "passion" for Addison Gilbert is because "we get fearful we don't have information."

Laverty declined Tarr's invitation to put the promise of a permanent future for the hospital in writing.

But he agreed to return to the City Council on a regular basis.