Chris Stedile
Castlegar News
Council has unanimously agreed that Trail’s request for support for a second access road to Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital (KBRH) is both premature and a conflict of interest.
Trail is requesting funding as part of the New Building Canada Plan and has asked for support from surrounding communities.
At Monday night’s council meeting Sue Heaton-Sherstobitoff said that Castlegar has also applied for the grant funding for additional cycling pathways. Additionally, the West Kootenay Regional Hospital Board has yet to review the study they submitted last fall.
“The WKBRH Board is meeting within the next couple weeks to review the study that we provided in the fall about direction and where we want to go,” she explained.
“We submitted a study where we went to 30 different areas, municipalities, regional districts and villages that belonged to the West Kootenay Hospital Board and asked them what they thought acute services in the west Kootenays should be. We hired a consultant and he developed a proposal plan and the board will be meeting next week or the week after to discuss that plan.”
The main point the board will be going over is whether or not they want to fund a feasibility study for a new hospital in the area.
When it comes to applying for funding Heaton-Sherstobitoff said, “It’s a cruel process, because you know there’s only so much money and every community in Canada is going to be vying for it.”
With each grant that gets approved the funding pool becomes smaller and the councillor said that the project they’re applying for is quite large.
“We don’t want anything to impede us from getting where we want our community to go and same with them,” she said.
Between February and March council will be presenting the project.
