Showing that it can admit when it's wrong, or at the very least operating in a grey area, Estevan city council recently made the decision to backtrack on its decision to charge the St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation property taxes on its Primary Health Care Centre.
Word of the decision came out during the Feb. 28 meeting regular meeting of council via a letter from foundation director Roxy Blackmore who thanked the City for its decision and its commitment to health care in Estevan.
Although the decision was not entirely unexpected, it was the correct one. In October, officials from the foundation went before council to ask the City to forgive the more than $37,000 in property taxes they owed on the facility. Due to what appeared to be a miscommunication between the organizations, the foundation felt it would not have to pay taxes on the health centre.
The City obviously disagreed, noting that foundation's two-year grace period under the innovative CANDO program had lapsed and they were on the hook for the taxes. Council also pointed out there were other issues at play including the idea of being fair to other health clinics in Estevan that do pay taxes.
In the end, it appears the City ultimately decided that because the foundation was operating under the assumption that taxes were not an issue and had not built that cost into the leases with their tenants, and would have to dip into money that should be used for improving services at the hospital, they would forgive the taxes for 2010 and 2011. The issue will be revisited in 2012.
Any insistence by council that the foundation pay the outstanding taxes would have been both contradictory and self-defeating.
The foundation's primary purpose is to purchase needed equipment for the hospital and with $37,000 less in their coffers, their ability to purchase said equipment would have been greatly damaged. This at a time when the City has made improving health care one of its top priorities.
One can assume the relationship between the organizations would also have been significantly damaged. And if you have two of the most important groups on the local health care scene at odds with each other, guess what, we all lose.
So the City deftly sidestepped all those potential landmines by letting common sense rule the day.
But another question has arisen from this issue. Why was the decision to forgive the taxes not made in open council? The delegation from the foundation made their plea at the Oct. 18 meeting of council. The next time it was brought up in an open forum was Feb. 28 when Blackmore's letter was included in the meeting package.
There's no reason to believe council was trying to hide something, especially since this was a rather tepid issue when all was said and done. But when the decision is made behind closed doors it automatically raises suspicions and leads to a certain level of distrust. And it also leads to the next question: what other topics are they keeping behind closed doors that should be raised in public? There might be none but again the suspicion level is raised.
Council has done an admirable job of repairing its image after the shoddy way the automated garbage issue was handled. They have been willing to listen to, and consult, the public on important matters. And as they displayed with their decision, they will change their minds if the situation warrants it.
It's a shame to see them throw some of that hard fought goodwill out the window for no apparent reason.
