Mountain View County councillors have passed a motion regarding a funding request from the Sundre Health Professional Attraction and Retention Committee.During the recent regularly scheduled council meeting, councillors OK'd the following motion: “That council approve including the request for funding from the committee the maximum amount of $54,000 on a 50-50 cost sharing basis with the Town of Sundre to the 2013 budget.”Committee chairman Gerald Ingeveld appeared before council, saying the funds requested will be used to help rent a house in the Sundre area.Providing one year's rent to new physicians will allow them time to find suitable housing and become established in the community, he said.A similar funding request has been made to the Town of Sundre and that request is now part of budget deliberations, he said.The total funding request is $108,000, with the county's portion being $54,000.In Sundre, six of the nine physicians now in place are scheduled to move to other locations and activities, he said.To date, the committee has been able to recruit six physicians to relocate to Sundre within the next 12 months.The committee believes that requests for financial assistance of this magnitude will not be a reoccurring requirement, he said.“It is my hope this is a short-term problem,” he said. “I hope this is a very, very short-term thing.”Coun. Kevin Good said he is concerned that the county could face similar requests from other towns in the county or could end up having to match or surpass incentives offered by other jurisdictions.“It's a big problem in a lot of areas,” said Good. “I can really see problems where this road is heading, to have one town bidding against another town with incentives, I just don't know if we want to go there. I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think this is the road.“We have four other towns in this municipality and several of them have similar issues I'm sure. Where does it end? It's a slippery road to go down.”In response, Ingeveld said: “I also don't want to get into a competition with other municipalities. My hope is this is a very short-term thing.”Coun. Al Kemmere said he would like the county to come up with a region-wide strategy for dealing with requests such as the one made by the Sundre committee.“At the same time I believe the county needs to be involved since it is our residents too who access facilities. I'm not discounting it, but we need to be a little more strategic rather than ad hoc,” said Kemmere.Coun. Paddy Munro said: “I really believe this hospital is in crisis. Sundre is the fastest growing area in the county. On a May long weekend you get 20,000 people coming through there. I believe this is a type of downloading, but I accept that because I don't want to put these people at risk.”Reeve Bruce Beattie was not present at last week's meeting. However, in a note read into the record, Beattie said his preference would be for the county to investigate the option of providing interest-free loans to new doctors to help them get started in Sundre.Coun. Duncan Milne said he would be in support of an interest-free loan option.Council also passed a motion directing administration to bring back a report on options for the retention of physicians on a countywide basis.
