Talks with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care concerning the redevelopment of Cassellholme could happen within the next few weeks.
That is the hope of city councillor Chris Mayne who sits as chair of the Cassellholme board. Eight of the financing member municipalities agreed that South Algonquin be released from future major capital contributions toward the project.
“An issue came up last August when South Algonquin, one of the financing member municipalities, indicated it wanted to leave the Cassellholme financial arrangement for various reasons,” said Mayne.
“At the December meeting, it was decided to release South Algonquin from their upfront capital contribution, which is about $50,000 a year. The thinking is, the longer we delay the redevelopment, the costs are exceeding that. We don’t want to have our redevelopment held up, or stalled for another four to six years while they negotiate with the province. You do that on your own, and we’ll release you from the capital.”
Any further changes in regard to the redirection of that municipality's share of the operating costs are to be addressed by South Algonquin directly with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
“The Ministry of Health asked us to reach an amicable agreement with South Algonquin, which we’ve done,” said Mayne.
“We were there in person the second week in January, and they have agreed to our proposal. So hopefully we’ve overcome this last hurdle and now the province will sit down with the Cassellholme board and give us the redevelopment agreement.
“The redevelopment agreement is a contract with the province saying we can go ahead and go to tender. That is what we’re waiting for, that’s what we’ve been working toward for the past four years.”
Professional estimates put the cost of the project at about $62 million.
“There are varying stories coming out right now with the impact of the American steel tariffs on substantial construction in Canada. We’re anxious to get out to tender to find out how close to the original $62 million budget figure we’ve had, the costs actually are,” said Mayne.
“So the next step is to get the redevelopment agreement signed, go to tender, go back to the board with those costs, and if everything is reasonably close to our expectations, then we’ll go back to the member municipalities, sign off on long term contracts, and construction would begin.”
The project calls for the addition of much-needed beds.
“We get to replace the existing 240 beds. We get to add eight behavioural supports special needs beds, and another 16 beds over and above that as well. So that brings us to 264 beds,” said Mayne.
“My sense is once all of the member municipalities have forwarded their motions of support for the Cassellholme board’s decision to the Ministry of Health reasonably quickly, within, I’ll say 10 days to two weeks, they could call us for a meeting and give us the redevelopment agreement, and then we can move forward. Realistically, we would hope we would be meeting with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care within the next two to six weeks, subject to their availability.”
North Bay City Council approved a motion Tuesday night, asking the Ministry to work with Cassellholme to get the redevelopment started as soon as possible.
