Lottery keeps doctors in town

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This article was published 26/05/2017 (3036 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a unique and innovative lottery that helps fund a medical centre and attract and keep doctors in a rural community.

But unlike grand prizes of dream cottages, exotic cars and $1-million purses offered by the St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre foundations lotteries, the winner of this draw next week could drive away in a brand new tractor.

It’s the country-style Neepawa Area Development Corp. (NADCO) lottery.

“It’s huge in the community, and we get tremendous support,” said Mary Ellen Clark, the lottery chairwoman of the Beautiful Plains Medical Clinic Committee.

In its 11 years, the lottery has helped fund the Country Meadows Care Home, helped purchase a building for the Beautiful Plains Medical Clinic and paid for all renovations and upgrades of that medical centre without government help.

“We tried bake sales, we tried lobster fests, we tried raffles. Well, you can’t raise thousands of dollars doing little projects like that,” Clark said.

After various fundraisers and little to show for the efforts, the committee noticed how successful a $100,000 lottery was for the Dauphin Kings of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. A committee member contacted the same company, Performance Promotions in Yorkton, Sask., about setting up a lottery for Neepawa.

“In order to make money, you had to go big,” Clark said. Last year, the Neepawa lottery set a record by raking in $118,000.

In its first four years, the lottery helped fund the new personal care home. Since then, it strictly funds improvements and expansion of its medical services; money has gone toward operating costs and such things as building renovations and the introduction of electronic record-keeping at Beautiful Plains.

The clinic needs more space, and, in preparation for the expansion, two adjacent houses were purchased and demolished.

Neepawa’s success has inspired others to try the same. In Portage la Prairie, the Portage District General Hospital Foundation held its first lottery this year to fund a helicopter pad.

Neepawa’s lottery has never completely sold out, and that’s become a rallying cry in the community this year. The limit is 4,500 tickets at $100 a crack or three for $250. That also buys a chance in a 50/50 draw that’s up to $79,000.

Ken Waddell, the publisher of several weekly newspapers, including the Neepawa Press and Neepawa Banner, recently took up the lottery’s cause in one of his columns.

“It’s a success story,” he wrote. “Without a clinic, there are no doctors… Without NADCO stepping up, there would not be a successful clinic in Neepawa today.”

He urged residents to make the lottery a sellout for the first time.

“As a community, we need to stand up for ourselves,” he said. “We and everyone who lives in a small local community can take our destiny in our hands and make a difference for ourselves and our future.”

Neepawa has turned into a boom town ever since Winnipeg spurned a proposed hog-processing plant on Dugald Road, and HyLife Foods set up outside the town instead. Waddell, a former mayor, has joked Neepawa should erect a statue of Winnipeg Coun. Russ Wyatt, crediting him with rejecting HyLife, which found a spot along the Yellowhead Highway.

The winner has a choice: $100,000 cash; a New Holland tractor valued at $98,000; a truck-camper-pontoon boat combination valued at $119,000; or a John Deere farm package that includes a small tractor with loader, snowblower and rototiller attachments, plus a gator utility vehicle for hauling dirt and a riding mower, valued at $110,000.

A tractor? As if that needs explanation. This is farm country, Clark said. But these are relatively small vehicles. Large tractors can be priced at more than a half-million dollars.

The deadline is 9 p.m. next Saturday, and the draw is at 3 p.m. June 4 in the Neepawa town office.

There are 17 draws in total, including five prizes of $1,000 each and 10 draws of $500 each, and the already completed early-bird draw.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca