Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen says many important community needs were left out of the Alberta spring budget. The budget was tabled yesterday (Feb. 28) and included about $14 million for Lethbridge specific projects.
The budget allocates $11.2 million over three years to expand the renal dialysis program at the Chinook Regional Hospital. Hyggen says he was very disappointed to not see money for a new catheterization lab in the city, something he has been actively advocating for for years.
“I thought that the advocacy work that we were doing was going to pay off. There was a lot of great conversations and probably not on paper, but some promises made but maybe not promises kept,” Hyggen says. “You can’t put a price on life and I believe that was done here today and that is again, disappointing.”
He says the city was seeking around $7 million in annual operating funds and about $12-13 million to set the lab up, adding the hospital is ready for it and he believed the funding was a guarantee.
Hyggen says he will continue advocating for a catheterization lab in the city and he plans on meeting with doctors later this week to discuss it. “If funding isn’t coming from the province, what can we do?” he says. “This is life changing, a catheterization lab is saving lifes. Not only that but I believe that it would pay itself back because of all of the savings with transporting individuals up to Calgary.”
As far as Lethbridge specific projects in the budget, Hyggen says he was disappointed to see very few. “I thought I was missing a page,” he says.
Aside from the renal dialysis lab, the only Lethbridge project listed on the budget is $3 million for destination project phase 2 planning at the University of Lethbridge.
“In general we saw a lot of broad funding so it can certainly help our residents in many ways, but unfortunately some of the more important Lethbridge community needs that council has been advocating for for quite some time are unfortunately absent from this budget and again we’ll dig deeper into it and see if they’re hidden somewhere else,”Hyggen says.
Another aspect Hyggen says was overlooked is water and wastewater in Lethbridge, which he says needs attention in order to welcome new businesses to the city.
“We are pretty much at capacity there and so in order to expand or to welcome business into our community, we need to have some work done on our water treatment plant, as well as our wastewater and so for that reason I was quite sure that this would be in the budget and what we did see was about a third of what we would require to do our work is what was provided for the complete province,” he says.
Hyggen says there is money in the budget for social housing, another thing the city has been active in advocating for, but it is a lump sum for the entire province and will be divided up later.