Six years ago Jasper opened the doors to the Alpine Summit Seniors Lodge, a facility made possible by the municipality’s participation in the Evergreens Foundation, and soon—perhaps as soon as 2015—Jasper will be asked to return the favour.
That favour will see the municipality contribute funding to the expansion of the seniors housing facilities in both Hinton and Edson—projects that tally up to more than $40 million and add 119 assisted living units to the region.
Evergreens is a non-profit organization that provides housing for seniors in the Yellowhead region.
Jasper joined the foundation in the mid 90s, knowing that one day the community would receive an assisted living facility that would be jointly funded by the foundation’s participating municipalities.
Those municipalities include Hinton, Edson, Yellowhead County, Grande Cache and Parkland County.
Membership in the foundation provides each municipality with equal voting power and divvies up funding responsibilities based on each community’s tax base.
Through that distribution of costs, Jasper paid less than $600,000 for Alpine Summit.
Based on its 2014 assessment, the municipality is responsible for about eight per cent of the Evergreens Foundation’s capital and operational costs. That means, if approved by the Evergreens board, Jasper will be responsible for about eight per cent of the cost of expanding Edson’s Parkland Lodge and Hinton’s Pine Valley Lodge. Comparatively, Yellowhead County bears the brunt of the weight, paying nearly 53 per cent.
In hopes of reducing the overall cost to its members, Evergreens is currently writing provincial grant applications for each of the expansion projects, and according to Coun. Gilbert Wall, Jasper’s representative on the board, it hopes to receive 75 cents for every dollar spent.
“That would mean through granting the province would pay about three-quarters of the project costs and the foundation would requisition for the other quarter, reducing the cost to members to about $10 million,” said Wall.
That would be the best case scenario and would equate to about a $1.2 million requisition from the Municipality of Jasper.
The proposed expansion in Edson will create 62 new supportive living units, adding to the 18 that are already there, as well as 22 new independent living units. Hinton’s expansion will see 15 new supportive living units, on top of its 30 existing units, and 10 independent living units.
“These facilities, in my view, are absolutely necessary,” said Wall. “We have people who are in desperate need of this kind of housing and have nowhere to go in these communities.”
To help with its grant applications, Evergreens has requested that each of its participating municipalities pass a motion showing support for the projects. Those motions will then be sent to the provincial government, which recently issued a request for proposals for grants through the Affordable Supportive Living Initiative (ASLI).
Council will vote on such a motion at the Nov. 18 regular meeting, although some councillors take issue with Evergreen’s proposed wording.
The suggested motion states “we direct our board member to support the development of additional seniors’ supportive housing in Hinton and Edson,” which in the eyes of council, takes away Wall’s agency when it comes time to vote at the board level.
“It removes any independence from our representative,” said Mayor Richard Ireland. “It’s an odd way to deal with a board that’s made up of representatives from various communities. We don’t do this in any other situation. We don’t direct councillors ... on other boards and committees in advance of how they should cast their votes.”
Coun. Vonna Arsenault agreed.
“I think it’s politically wrong and it’s sort of an intervention into a system that’s been successful and encouraged democratic, open discussion.”
Ireland proposed that council come up with its own motion, showing support for the projects, while maintaining Wall’s independence.
Nicole Veerman
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