Quote:
Originally Posted by NBNYer
Especially considering that they are both large hospitals in the inner city with the Dumont being practically downtown! Pretty typical move in this province. Lack of parking?? Lets all take the easiest, cheap way out and compromise the city's built form and use of space further by expanding the surface parking lot into the adjacent established neighborhoods. No regards to any future consequences to the city. Small town, rural, backwards mentality.
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The main problem is that the Department of Health has absolutely no balls and is (and always has been) subject to blatant political interference at every single level. Just look at the recent gene sequencing fiasco (between the Dumont and the SJRH) for reference.
As far as the parking garage situation is concerned. This is how the DoH would envisage the scenario of a proposed parking structure to play out:
1) - The Moncton Hospital has a plan for a new oncology clinic, which would be coupled with an expansion of the Professional Arts Building and a new parking structure (the latter two components would be privately financed).
2) - The Dumont Hospital would immediately get up in arms because they have similar parking problems and would demand a provincially funded parking facility twice the size of the proposed structure at TMH because they are "special" and a "university hospital centre"
3) - The Saint John Regional Hospital gets wind of this and states "there's no God damned way that Moncton gets two parking garages at their hospitals when we don't even have one!!". They immediately petition the government for a parking garage three times the size of the one at the TMH stating that they are the largest hospital in the province and God's gift to medicine in NB.
4)- The regional hospitals in the north begin to complain stating that "everything goes to the south" and demand similar parking facilities in Campbellton, Bathurst and Miramichi.
Fearing the above scenario, the province decides that the easiest way out is to simply prohibit the private interests from building the parking garage at the Moncton Hospital. Since the parking garage is vital to the expansion of the Professional Arts Building, that project is also cancelled. In the end, all the Moncton Hospital ends up with is a new oncology clinic in a building so small that there isn't even room for the oncologists to have offices.........
If you think things like this can't happen, a similar thing happened when new MRI machines were required in the major regional hospitals not so long ago. Things became politicized and went wildly out of control to the point that every single friggin hospital in the province (down to the Upper River Valley Hospital) ended up with an MRI. Was this an effective usage of tax payers dollars and is it good medicine - absolutely not. MRI technology is vital, but only in hospitals with a core of specialists skilled in interpreting the images and able to apply the information obtained for appropriate patient care. You're really talking about the top 4-5 hospital in the province and nothing else. What a waste of money!!!
There are way too many competing factions in this province:
- French vs English
- North vs South
- Saint John vs Moncton vs Fredericton
- Urban vs Rural
No other province in the federation is hamstrung like this. It's why the safest decision for the provincial bureaucracy is no decision at all. This is why nothing gets done in this province and this is why we're falling behind everyone else.......
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from the geese and goslings these things attack small children... 
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