WELLINGTON COUNTY – Responsibility for accessing upper tier funding for Wellington County’s proposed Continuum of Care seniors community project has been switched from the county’s information, heritage and seniors (IHS) committee to administration, finance and human resources (AFHR).
IHS chair councillor Mary Lloyd announced the change in a report during the April 29 Wellington County council meeting.
The concept of a supportive seniors community on a 15-acre parcel of land at the 209-acre Wellington Place campus has been under discussion since February of 2018. Currently, plans call for a 254-unit development in close proximity to Wellington Terrace, the county-owned and operated long-term care home at Aboyne.
In October of 2020 council agreed to make efforts to secure additional government funding before committing to the project after the price tag rose from a preliminary estimate of $88 million to a projected cost of $135 million.
“Preliminary political interviews, messages and meetings have been happening with the six (provincial and federal) elected officials in our Wellington and Guelph areas. There seems to be an excitement for this project,” said Lloyd.
“Looking forward it’s very important to realize that funding announcements regarding senior lifestyles will be coming forward quickly. There’s no wait that’s going to be happening on this. Things will begin to return to normal, but in the coming days we’re going to be hearing about announcements,” she explained.
“I’m happy to know that the AF and HR are going to be taking the next steps in finding funding opportunities, but I want to assure you all that information heritage and seniors and social services (committees) are going to be continuing to work hard to identity sources of money too. We are all in this together. Our residents, and most especially our senior residents, deserve and need this type of project to go forward,” said Lloyd.
Councillor Diane Ballantyne questioned the process for making the change in committee responsibility.
“I’m not debating that perhaps that’s the appropriate decision at this particular time,” said Ballantyne.
However, she added, “It wasn’t brought to our last committee meeting just a couple of weeks ago. So I am surprised that this is happening without any consultation at the committee level.”
Lloyd referred the question to Warden Kelly Linton.
“This is a pretty significant project for the county and it never really fit specifically under the IH and S committee. If you recall back to when we established the project team to design this facility it included members and councillors from … social services, IH and S and AF and HR. So it never really was underneath that committee,” Linton explained.
“It wasn’t really moving it. It wasn’t put there specifically in the first place. It was there because we needed to put it through our committee structure,” Linton continued.
“Going forward, the decision was made, and I made that decision, that because this was a government relations and a financial perspective that we had to take at this point, it felt like that was a better committee at this stage in the process to really make sure that we’re leveraging our relationship with the federal government and the province through AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario) and FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) and making sure that our treasurer, Ken, is very involved in it from an AF and HR Lens,” Linton stated.
“So it really wasn’t a massive change, it was just a slight shift so we can make sure that we leverage the government relations component and the finance component,” said Linton.
“I appreciate the rationale, warden,” said Ballantyne.
“What I am questioning is the process. You used the term a slight shift … as a committee member I don’t see it as a slight shift that it has been moved and it’s the process I’m really wondering about. Why, two weeks ago, did we not have a conversation at committee – and I don’t doubt that the result would be the same – I am perplexed as to why this was not brought to committee to discuss?” she continued.
“It wasn’t a project that fit nicely under IH and S. It wasn’t really under that committee. It just fit there defacto,” responded Linton.
