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Smiths Falls mayor pitches tax levy to cover hospital costs

Smiths Falls mayor pitches tax levy to cover hospital costs

Increasing taxes rarely a popular idea, particularly in an election year, but that's not stopping the mayor of Smiths Falls, Ont., from pitching a tax levy to fund growing hospital costs.

Shawn Pankow told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Monday that the money would help pay for capital and equipment costs at the Perth & Smiths Falls District Hospital.

He's making the pitch this week to both town councils, and to the other seven municipalities in the surrounding catchment area.

Each municipality in that area, which has a total population of about 44,000, would collect a different amount depending on the number of residents and their expected use of hospital services.

For Smiths Falls, one of the largest communities in the catchment, it's estimated to cost about $177,000, or $20 per resident, Pankow said.

'The needs are greater than the past'

While the province funds hospital operations, Pankow said communities have always funded equipment and other costs, citing the CHEO Telethon and other hospital foundation fundraising efforts.

Pankow himself worked for a community hospital foundation for more than 10 years, and said it's always a struggle to find the money for new equipment and services.

"Looking to the future, the needs are greater than the past, and the capacity of the foundations and auxiliaries to meet those needs really isn't there," Pankow said.

"Really the gist of it is, the more services we are able to provide to residents of our community and the entire catchment area, which represents over 44,000 people, the better quality of life opportunities we have and the more attractive we are as a community group for businesses to locate and for people to move to."

A 'community in transition'

Pankow said he wants to put the idea out there now, in an election year, to allow residents to talk about their preferences with incumbents and candidates, and to allow incumbents and candidates to take a stand either way.

It's also a good time to make the pitch, he said, because of Smiths Falls's growing cannabis industry and hotter-than-usual real estate market.

"We're really a community in transition right now, and we're seeing ... a dramatic transformation of our local economy," Pankow said.

"So I think from a timing perspective it's a very appropriate time to consider something like this."