Edgewood gives $35K for health facility
Construction of $6M project slated to be finished in late 2018
The town of Edgewood will put a slice of money toward the multimillion dollar regional medical center that Santa Fe County plans to build in the 3,800-resident municipality at the eastern foot of the Sandia Mountains.
County commissioners this week unanimously approved the town’s $35,000 contribution — conveyed in novelty-large-check form by Edgewood Mayor John Bassett — that will go toward the roughly $6 million project to build the 22,000-square-foot East Mountain Regional Health Facility.
“I’ve been up here four, five, six, seven times asking for things from the commission to help with this project,” Bassett said. “It’s a proud day for me to come back and give something.”
The planned medical center, to be owned by the county and operated by Albuquerque-based First Choice Community Health Care, will serve residents of southern Santa Fe County as well as nearby Bernalillo and Torrance counties, according to a county resolution.
Primary care, dental services, behavioral health services and some specialty services for women and infant children will be available to residents of the region — as well as after-hours care, something area residents currently have to travel to Albu- querque or Santa Fe to receive, said Krista Kelley, a project consultant for First Choice Community Health Care.
The state Department of Health identified the southern part of Santa Fe County and surrounding area as underserved medically and found the current population-to-provider ratio is 18,343-to-1, according to a county resolution approved earlier this year.
County voters in 2016 approved the sale of $3 million in bonds to help fund the clinic’s construction. Other construction funds will come from federal agencies and state capital outlay money.
A groundbreaking ceremony is expected sometime in “late fall,” Kelley said.
A target completion date for construction is December 2018, said Tony Flores, deputy county manager.
The county approval of Edgewood’s contribution Tuesday represented “one of those linchpin moments” in the project development, Flores said. Several county commissioners lauded the show of intergovernmental bonhomie.
Commissioner Robert Anaya, whose district encompasses Edgewood and the vast southern stretches of the 2,000-squaremile county, said the agreement demonstrated the ability for governing bodies to work to fill residents’ needs across jurisdictional lines.
“In these times we live in, it’s huge to have that type of relationship with another governmental entity like we have,” Anaya said.
Kelley said Edgewood’s current clinic — housed in a decades-old portable building that she said is “beyond its useful capacity” — serves some 7,300 primary care and dental patients annually. The new medical center, according to the county resolution, will service 13,000 county residents.