Council says get on with Tidal View plans

By Michael Gorman

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The Town of Yarmouth has decided to step aside and allow plans for a replacement facility for Tidal View Manor to proceed.

During a special meeting last week with Gordon Wood of the Tidal View board and Sandra Boudreau, the facility's administrator, members of council let it be known that although they all support a new facility, some of them do not support the proposed off-hospital site the board has selected.

However at a meeting later in the week, council decided they have done all they could to voice their opinion and need to step aside and let the project go ahead.

"Council is saying to the board get on with (the plans)," said Mayor Charles Crosby. "We've got to get this thing done."

During the meeting with Wood and Boudreau, Wood told council that the new facility, which would cost around $30 million and must be a single level, needs to go ahead as soon as possible to ensure funding remains in place and the project is completed. There was concern from some people that if the project is further delayed and an election comes during that time, funding for the project could be lost.

However the mayor said this is not the case. He said Yarmouth's MLA, Richard Hurlburt, told him the money for the facility, and the other eight the province is building, would be there whether the government changes or not.

The mayor and councillors Clifford Hood and Murray Judge have voice some serious concerns about the project. Hood, the most outspoken critic of the project for some time, is concerned about what relocating the facility to somewhere else within the town limits will do to the town's tax base.

Hood has long voiced a concern for the town's depleting tax base and wondered why a location outside the town limits could not be considered, something Wood said the board did not do due to logistics with sewer and water connections.

At this point, said Wood, the board has yet to buy a piece of property but has a list of five potential locations. At the top of the list is about 10 acres of land behind Walmart. At the bottom of the list is the hospital location.

"We cannot buy a piece of land until we go through all the hoops," said Wood. He said the board consulted with the town's planner about whether or not their proposal would infringe on environmental concerns.

"The piece (of land) that we are looking at is not in that sensitive area," Wood said referring to Broad Brook. "It's very near it but it's not in it."

Hood, like the mayor and Judge, said that he is unconvinced that the facility cannot be located at the hospital and went so far as to refer to the present project outline as a "cock-eyed, cockamamie, unsustainable deal." He also voiced concern about the government spending such a large about of money for a facility that creates no new beds.

Members of the Tidal View board are no longer supporting the idea of staying at the hospital because of difficulties they would have in terms of moving a parking lot and helipad and because they do not think the area is conducive to taking residents outside. It is also unclear whether or not the new design could fit at the hospital.

"Quality of life is much improved," Wood said of the board's proposed facility and location.

Judge, the chair of the town's Planning Advisory Committee, said he has real concerns about whether or not the board's site of choice would be able to get the rezoning requirements it would need to locate on the land behind Walmart.

"Maybe I'm wrong," he said, "but I'll be very surprised if the pubic that live around that area are not going to oppose the development."

Also at issue with respect to planning is the need for the land to be rezoned, a process that will take anywhere between three and six months, and the fact that a $100,000 transportation study between the town and province calls for an eventual road to join Chestnut Street with what is now Highway 101. That connector road would run along the base of the proposed Tidal View site.

For sketches of what the proposed plans look like, pick up this week's Vanguard.