GUELPH – Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health’s board passed its 2021 budget on Nov. 4 – a “status quo” budget totalling $23,724,348.
David Kingma, director of administrative services, said the province recently restored base funding to 2019 levels, and the health unit is being reimbursed for COVID-19 costs it has incurred beyond the budget.
So, it’s a balanced budget the board approved.
Thirty-four per cent of the budget is funded by the member municipalities.
Kingma said the City of Guelph proposed a 1.27% increase in its base funding and 1.14% in growth enhancements to total 2.41% and Wellington and Dufferin counties agreed to the same increase.
That means the province will cover $14,781,500, Guelph will pay $4,122,287, Wellington County $2,845,551 and Dufferin County $1,925,677.
The health unit has spent about $2.1 million in extra costs due to the pandemic and anticipates this will rise to $2.8 million by year-end.
These costs include hiring more staff for contact tracing, public health nurses for schools, and increased IT costs to enable more staff to work from home.
The pandemic costs have been covered by the province to date, although Chris White, chair of the audit and finance committee, said the budget identifies the pandemic “and the potential reorganization at the provincial level” as risks.
“We’re mitigating that as best we can,” White said.
The health unit stopped all but its essential programs in March and has redeployed staff to COVID-related duties.
That means it is non-compliant in some areas that are reported to the province. The province has said there will be no penalties this year given the extraordinary circumstances.
The health unit put its seniors’ dental program on hold last spring but is preparing to launch it soon.
The plan is to have two dedicated clinic sites – one in Guelph and one in Orangeville – to offer free or low payment dental care to seniors.
They are working with local dentists to care for seniors with acute pain until the program is running.
