Belleville city council rejects budget for local long-term care facilities

By Lori-Anne Little

BELLEVILLE – There are 278 seniors waiting to move into Hastings Manor, a Belleville nursing home, and they might have to wait even longer after the proposed budget for two long-term care facilities were refused by Belleville city council.

Hastings Manor and Centennial Manor, two of Hasting County’s long-term care facilities, brought forward their budgets at the county finance committee meeting Tuesday. The funding for these facilities is supposed to be split between the City of Quinte West and Belleville.

Quinte West accepted the budget, but with Belleville’s refusal the council has to look to the province for more funding to help cover costs.

Both manors offer 24-hour, seven day a week service which is costly to maintain said the warden of Hastings County, Rodney Cooney. After experiencing several challenges this year Paul Jenkins, long-term care committee chair, said that the budget brought forth by the committee was fair and reasonable, but Belleville city council said that the increases of 17 and 34 per cent is just too much.

Hasting County’s finance committee members say that cuts to the budget will have devastating effects on patient care.

“If we did what Belleville city council wants, there is no question that resident care will be dramatically reduced … At Hastings Manor we would need to cut 12,178 personal support worker hours,” long-term care chair Paul Jenkins said.

“That really means a cut of 33 hours per day of care … we would need to lay off 6.25 full time (personal support worker) staff,” Jenkins said.

Cooney said that the council will be sending Belleville the bill for their portion of the long-term care budgets and they expect full payment as part of a cost-sharing agreement both cities agreed to in 2001.

“We are not going to do that to our most vulnerable seniors at either manor. Not on our watch,” stated Warden Cooney.