The rendering above is of the Red Deer recovery community, which will be located at the city's north end, and be operational in the first half of 2022. (Gov't of Alberta)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

partnering with the province

City spending $1.5 million for servicing recovery community site

Jun 16, 2021 | 2:49 PM

The City of Red Deer will spend $1.5 million to service the land selected as the site for a 75-bed therapeutic recovery community.

It was announced last week by the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions that the facility will be located on the city’s north end, along Highway 2A within Chiles Industrial Park.

RELATED: Province selects north end location for Red Deer’s recovery centre

The province is providing $5 million for its construction, starting this fall, but had requested the municipality complete servicing for water and sanitary.

On Tuesday, city council unanimously gave first reading to the $1.5 million expenditure, which will come from the City’s off-site levy program.

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Council also approved monetary support for the project in the amount of 50 per cent of the off-site levy fees. The other half will be paid by the province. The total amount of the fee is projected at $600,000.

The City will also provide monetary and staff support in the amount of $50,000 for landscaping purposes to be funded through already approved operating dollars.

“It is a rare exception for a municipality to partner on a project of provincial jurisdiction to this magnitude, but [this is] recognizing that the national addictions crisis has prompted many of the health and social challenges that our community’s experiencing,” says Mayor Tara Veer, noting the City’s community drug and alcohol strategy commissioned a couple years ago.

“It was imperative we had a timely solution to this. It would’ve been unacceptable for us to wait for another provincial budget year because it would’ve delayed not only the therapeutic community, but also the implementation of the drug treatment court.”

RELATED: Red Deer’s drug treatment court to open by mid-2022

Veer says for those reasons and others, the City was willing to come to the table with the province.

“Our first partnership was the sale of the land for a dollar, because they are underutilized public lands. The second was what we dealt with now, the $1.5 million for servicing to secure water for the site,” Veer explains. “We also agreed in order to help make the site a community within a community, [and with] there being natural landscaping on the east side of the site, in order to provide privacy for residents and visual screening, we will provide a landscaping component for the north and west side of the site.”

The underground work and landscaping are things that would’ve needed to happen at the site eventually anyway, the mayor adds.

Final approval of the funding will come before council in six weeks.