The Nanaimo Regional Hospital District board passed its budget, with a 21 per cent tax increase, or $63.96 per $100,000 of assessed property value.<\/p>\n
In a Tuesday, March 24 press release, the board cited the Province of B.C. moving forward with the board\u2019s offer to pay for a concept plan for a patient tower and cardiac catheterization lab at the hospital, as part of the reason for the increase.<\/p>\n
It brings the overall tax requisition for the hospital district to $49.5 million. This includes $3.5 million for capital equipment and minor projects, $5.3 million for debt servicing on existing major capital projects, as well as reserve funds for the board\u2019s priority projects, including the patient tower and the cardiac cath lab.<\/p>\n
During the meeting, Janice Perrino, hospital board chair and Nanaimo area director, told the board it\u2019s expected that the concept plans will take approximately six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister (Bowinn) Ma, our minister of infrastructure, gave us the word that we will go forward with the concept plan, good news,\u201d Perrino said. \u201cThe concept plan must include the cath lab and must include operational dollars for the cath lab, better news. It was just fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the concept plan, a business plan would need to be undertaken, which the board has also offered to fund. Once that begins, Perrino estimated it to take another six to 18 months before it can move to request for proposals, then construction stage.<\/p>\n
Typically, with capital projects such as a cardiac cath lab or patient tower, the province would be responsible for covering 60 per cent of the cost, while regional hospital district taxpayers would cover the remainder.<\/p>\n
Under this new agreement, the early stages of planning will fall under the 40 per cent covered by the hospital district, while the later stages will fall within the province\u2019s 60 per cent.<\/p>\n
Not all board members were onboard with a 21 per cent tax increase from last year\u2019s tax amount.<\/p>\n
Leanne Salter, Coombs area director, said that while residents need hospital access, she brought up an anecdote of one resident telling her they are moving away because they can\u2019t afford to live in the area. Meanwhile, both hospital capital projects are years away from seeing any construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really need to get a handle on what we\u2019re doing here, because our job is sewer, water, garbage, rural roads, land. That\u2019s what we\u2019re supposed to be focusing on, and we\u2019re not,\u201d Salter said. \u201cWe\u2019re far beyond that, we\u2019re looking at zero waste, sea level rise, air quality, and now this insane amount for the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Swain, Lantzville area director, drew attention to the different amounts each community in the regional district will need to pay, calling it a \u201cgross disparity\u201d with the higher accessed house values in Lantzville.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand, yes the average house cost, that\u2019s fine, but I try to split it out to what is the per capita cost and if I\u2019m using Nanaimo\u2019s estimated population for 2025 being 122,000, basically the per capita cost is $186 per person,\u201d Swain said. \u201cLantzville, using a population estimate of 4,676 people is $271. There\u2019s disparity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other two votes against came from directors Jessica Stanley and Lehann Wallace.<\/p>\n
Despite this, overall the budget earned the favour of the majority, including Sean Wood, Parksville area director, who said they are \u201cmaking up for what previous boards did not do\u201d in filling reserve funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re just going to continue doing what we know is a good decision, so that later boards will hopefully have to put away less,\u201d Wood said. \u201cI hear frustration from the board about shovels in the ground, and we all want that. I think our chair is doing a fantastic job about making sure we get shovels in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doug O\u2019Brien, Parksville area director, meanwhile, argued there is \u201cnothing more important than hospital care\u201d on the regional district\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs painful as it may be \u2026 we need the health care,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nanaimo Regional Hospital District board passed its budget, with a 21 per cent tax increase, or $63.96…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-362767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}