Grey Highlands council has approved the release of the remaining funds it is paying towards the construction of the new hospital in Markdale.
At its meeting on March 1, council approved a staff report that requested permission to release $369,169 from its hospital reserve account for the project to Grey Bruce Health Services.
Construction on the project continues and the new hospital is expected to be fully operational by Sept. 2023. Grey Highlands committed a total of $1.2 million to the project. In July 2021, the municipality released $830,831 from the fund for the project. The remaining amount was a hold back/security deposit for the municipality as part of the hospital corporation’s site plan agreement with the municipality.
The hold back was calculated as 10 per cent of the on site works of just over $3.6 million.
In addition to the $1.2 million the municipality committed to the project, Grey Highlands has also added two payments of $36,000 from money raised at the local RAM rodeo event held in Feversham the past two years.
Council approved the report without comment and Mayor Paul McQueen noted that the funds would be released incrementally as the provisions in the site plan agreement were met.
Grey Highlands raised its commitment of $1.2 million for the hospital project over a period of a number of years by setting aside funding in reserve while the project worked its way through the provincial approval process.
