Brooks City Hall. (CHAT News Today)

By Teagan Rasche

Brooks not being reimbursed for more than $140,000 in COVID costs

Jan 20, 2022 | 9:59 AM

BROOKS, AB – The City of Brooks will not be compensated by the province for a $143,497 bill from early in the pandemic when they paid for hotels as isolation centres.

When the community was dealing with high COVID-19 cases in April of 2020, Alberta Health Services recommended the city to open isolation centres.

Brooks did in the form of hotel rooms, buying 389 nights, some of which were even for medical staff.

A few months later, the province put out a Request for Proposals in other areas of Alberta to fund some isolation centres, but Brooks’ bill was denied because their isolation centres happened before the request for proposals was put out.

Chief Administration Officer Alan Martens doesn’t think this is fair or equitable.

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“We thought we should see if we could get our costs reimbursed, it is about $143,000,” Martens said. “For a community of our size, that is significant as it represents over one per cent of our tax base.”

Brooks has sent a request for reconsideration in hopes the city can recover some of that cost.