In a 6-3 recorded vote, Belleville City Council approved an increase of $160,000 to the 2026 budget to allow for the recruitment of an additional three doctors, as well as two nurse practitioners and two specialists.
Council approved the decision at its meeting on Monday.
The money would come from the Automated Speed Enforcement reserve fund, originally earmarked for broader local traffic measures but has since been used for The Bridge project and physician recruitment.
Under Belleville’s recruitment program, a family doctor receives five $30,000 payments for a total of $150,000, a specialist receives three payments of $25,000 for a total of $75,000, and a nurse practitioner is granted two payments of $5,000 for a total of $10,000.
Once again, the discussion focused on the municipality’s role in doctor recruitment in relation to the proposed budget increase.
“The question becomes whether we take those scarce municipal dollars when we’re trying to get roads fixed, we’re trying to create parks, we’re trying to do all the other things that we have a responsibility to do as a local municipal government. That’s the expectation put on us as leaders to meet those municipal requirements, but yet we continue to dabble into areas that are outside our jurisdiction,” Councillor Paul Carr asked fellow councillors during the meeting.
“The Manager (of Physician Recruitment and Retention, Karen Poste) makes it clear; it’s in bold. It’s not our responsibility. Yet, why do we feel obligated to take those scarce municipal dollars to rescue it?”
Carr posed the question, asking if the taxpayer would be willing to fund doctor recruitment twice, once through municipal taxes and the other through provincial taxes.
He called on the Hastings Prince Edward Ontario Health Team to be “very clear” about whether they’re meeting their recruitment targets.
“We’re throwing in millions of municipal dollars to fund this, and yet there are millions of tax dollars from the provincial level going into this recruitment as well, so it seems to be a lot of money being spent,” Carr explained.
“Some results are occurring on one side, and the other side seems to be tripping over themselves. So, with the silos and with the fact that we only have so much money, I can’t support this.”
An amendment was brought forward by councillor Lisa-Anne Chatten that would change the source of funding from the Automated Speed Enforcement reserve fund to the Tax Rate Stabilization Fund.
Councillor Sean Kelly spoke in favour of increasing the budget, no matter if the source came from speed camera funds or from the Tax Rate Stabilization Fund.
“$160,000 seems to be a small amount of money from my perspective, and I’m not concerned about where it’s going to come from,” Councillor Kelly said.
“I don’t know how many repairs you can do on a road for $160,000, but I know we can cover a lot of groundwork with $160,000 supporting doctors and nurse practitioners. So that’s where I stand on that.”
The amendment lost in a 7-2 recorded vote, with the only yes votes coming from councillors Lisa-Anne Chatten and Barbara Enright-Miller.
The original motion passed in a 6-3 recorded vote, with no votes coming from councillors Paul Carr, Kelly Henderson, and Kathryn Brown.
Later in the meeting, during New Business, councillor Henderson brought forward a motion requesting city staff to prepare correspondence to the Hastings Prince Edward Ontario Health Team requesting $160,000 to offset the city’s funding.
The motion was passed unanimously in a recorded vote.
Councillor Carr also introduced a notice of motion calling on the mayor to write a letter to the provincial Minister of Health requesting that the province reimburse Belleville for the municipality’s spending on doctor recruitment, arguing that the city’s recruitment efforts have outpaced the Ontario Family Health Team’s.
Local MPPs Tyler Allsopp and Ric Bresee would also receive the letter.
The motion would be discussed at a future meeting of council
The funding increase paved the way for the city to announce four new doctors recruited by the program, as reported in the article found here.
