Grey County has decided to defer a motion to revisit a shelved plan to add 62 beds to Grey Gables Long-Term Care Home in Markdale.
Grey Highlands Mayor and County Councillor Paul McQueen put forward a motion at Thursday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, noting the Ontario government has announced it wants more long-term care beds built by 2025, and the hospital system has an increasing number of patients needing an alternative level of care. McQueen asked councillors to support a motion to direct staff to bring back a renewed costing of options.
Back in August of 2021, County Council received a report showing a significant increase in anticipated costs in the two long-term care builds planned in Markdale and Durham, up 42 per cent from previous estimates to over $108-million.
They decided to shelve the Grey Gables plan and focus on Rockwood Terrace Long-Term Care Home in Durham, which is mandated by the Province to upgrade its beds to Class ‘A.’
Councillors voted to defer that motion today.
County Chief Administrative Officer Kim Wingrove told councillors the timeline is too tight, explaining, “I can say with complete confidence to this council, that the current accelerated funding that was announced at the end of November— there is no way. Honestly, there is just no way that Grey Gables could be ready to be able to access those funds because the requirement is that we have to have a fully tendered project approved by this council and in to the ministry before the end of August, and a fully tendered project means that the design has to be all complete. There are a number of places in that process where the Province goes through a very, very detailed review of what is being proposed and whether or not that’s acceptable to them.”
Wingrove added, “We’ve been at this for the Rockwood build for months and months. So it just wouldn’t be possible to make that happen in that compressed timeline, mostly because the time that the Province needs is completely out of our control.”
Wingrove noted, in her view, it doesn’t mean there aren’t ways forward or a future project at the Grey Gables site the County can look at.
Some councillors had been in favour of asking staff for the costing, including Councillor Andrea Matrosovs, who said, “I do agree with the CAO that the timeline of trying to hit that mark to get the particular funding that’s being dangled in front of us– my concern more though, is to promote the idea that we get the report back, we see where we are, so that the Province sees the optics and the buy-in that we’re still keenly interested in holding onto those 60 some beds, because they do have that control.”
Councillor Scott Greig said he’s in support of work on Grey Gables, and of adding the 62 beds to create a 128 bed facility, but not at this time.
“I don’t think we need to rush into this in four of five months,” said Greig.
Greig made a motion to postpone the discussion until the tender process for Rockwood Terrace is complete.
He explained, “My desire is to sit on the ad hoc committee for redevelopment, (the County’s long-term care redevelopment task force) to learn more about where we’re at, what we’re getting into with Rockwood– with that new build and where financially, it’s going to lead us, so then we’ll have more information in terms of actual market conditions at play right now. It’s not reasonable to think that we would undertake both builds at the same time. It’s absolutely not. But I think once we have that financial commitment laid out before us, we are advancing that project– then we can have that discussion.”
In a recorded vote, the majority of councillors voted to wait until the tender process if complete for Rockwood Terrace before revisiting Grey Gables.