Just Where Did The $375,000 Go?
Monday, August 13, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
The building permit applied for by Commonwealth Health to do renovations at the new health care clinic which is designed to provide a clinic for people who do not have a doctor in this area, was let earlier this year for a total of $449,450.00. That is the information as made available by the City of Prince George building permits department.
Of interest is the question of just how much did the Spirit of the North HealthCare Foundation contribute to the renovation project?
The Spirit of the North was originally approached by the group to provide funding of $560,000 dollars. According to the information provided at the time, the money would go to capital costs, renovations, specific equipment and a medical records software plan.
The Spirit of the North settled for a contribution of $375,000 dollars and the question remains, just what will this money be used for?
The difference between the renovations and the contribution from Spirit of the North is $74,000 dollars.
The clinic will be operated by a provincially funded, not for profit, group of doctors working in partnership with Northern Health.
At the time, the Commonwealth Health building was chosen for the project, it was said that 5,000 people would be helped with the new clinic. Spirit of the North CEO at the time, Don McGowan, said the Commonwealth site was chosen by word of mouth. He added "isn’t that the way 90% of the business is conducted in Prince George?"
In spite of more than a half dozen requests by Opinion250 for an examination of the lease for the building and the cost of the equipment and leasehold improvements, we are unable to provide information as to how much is being spent on the project or what the final contribution was from the Spirit of the North for the renovations.
The facility is being funded by taxpayer money and it would seem reasonable that this type of information should be available.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s’ opinion.
Comments
…and don’t forget the original renovations were done with the help of NDI Trust interest free money even though it did not fit the criteria.Must be nice to use the public purse like an ATM:-(
Spirit of the North was set up so that the community could give funds to Northern Health and receive a charitable receipt for their gifts.
This sort of behavior really brings their purpose into question though. These are public funds that they are giving to their friends and it looks bad.
The other problem is that Spirit of the North’s overhead is now so high, that we’d be better as a community to give directly to Northern Health, give half what we planned, and keep the other half in our pockets. Northern Health would get more of our money that way, we’d get more (charitable receipts are only worth 43.6% of face value), and we’d know that the money got to Northern Health.
Of course, Spirit of the North would hate such a suggestion, but I don’t want to give money to them if they’re just going to spend it on big salaries and giving it to Commonwealth…
I have stopped donating to the Spirit of the North after I found out about their direct monetary assistance to Dan Maclaren’s CommonWealth Health Centre…..helping private business owners get ahead using public funds collected either via tax or through community donations is not good business ethics in my books, even if the province kicks in funding for renovations or Northern Health, it is still the use of public funds to assist a private enterprize. I know others who have also stopped donating to Spirit of the North since this fiasco.
“At the time, the Commonwealth Health building was chosen for the project, it was said that 5,000 people would be helped with the new clinic.”
Who did the choosing? What did we (the people) get in return?
Maybe only under special or unusual circumstances do certain people give out or get and keep receipts unless the paper trail is meant to fade over time. Just supposing.
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