WHAT the effort to build a new Mills Memorial Hospital needs is a champion. Someone of the highest order who can power through whatever obstacles there might be.
Someone like, for example, Premier Christy Clark who was present July 12 in Penticton for the official groundbreaking of what will be a $312.5 million six-storey tower at Penticton Regional Hospital.
Referring to the announcement she first made in 2014 that the project was approved, Clark said she knew there’d be skeptics but “here we are today, keeping that promise. Promise made. Promise kept.”
Even more, the premier continued, she pledged to help come up with the estimated $20 million needed to operate the Penticton facility when it’s finished.
Of course there’s a lot more to hospital construction than the above. Even someone like the premier can’t promise something out of the blue and snap her fingers to make happen.
A new Mills will cost somewhere north of $400 million and we should expect our governments to be wise and considered in their decisions of how they spend our money.
But that can surely be accomplished without the need for local officials to literally prostrate themselves before the provincial government as supplicants in some kind of medieval throwback.
But for now a new Mills needs a champion. If the premier fulfilled that role in Penticton, why not here.
