Georgetown Hospital Asks Town for Financial Support

We are in very tough budget deliberations. On our plate we have two to three arenas we have to build during this term, we have requests for senior's centers in both Acton and Georgetown plus many more big ticket items as well as the usual of road repairs, maintenance of our facilities. Last night at council the CAO of Halton Health Care John Oliver presented quite a compelling case for a $4.456 million dollar grant to the Georgetown Hospital for a new CT Scanner, improved Digital Imaging as well as an expansion for the hospital.

The total cost of the project is over 12 million dollars. Council members campaigned to be elected on the usual Municipal requests like the arenas, libraries etc. Hospitals normally are a Provincial jurisdiction. But I guess the Province is in difficult financial times as well as there are many hospital projects throughout the Province.

The hospital is confident that they can raise the money through the Hospital Foundation (they do wonderful fundraising), as well as the Hospital volunteers and through parking receipts etc. The Town will have to debenture the money over ten years if we do decide to go ahead which will be a Hospital Levy of up to 2% on the taxes. Council has asked our Treasurer to look at how we can finance this urgent need. There are many stories out there our CT Scanners do save lives. If council decides not to support this it may be 8 - 10 years before we get one.

Council supported a motion to have a public meeting on Jan. 24th to hear from you, our Halton Hills residents on whether they would support this as I stated earlier this is not really the norm for Municipalities. Having said that, Oakville and Burlington have already committed through their taxes support for their hospitals. It was only a short time ago that many people of Halton Hills along with myself, councillors of the day fought to keep obstetrics open in Georgetown.

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue. You can email me at mayor@haltonhills.ca We recognize the need, but can we afford it now is the question?