In a sometimes emotional plea Tuesday morning, Shelburne Mayor Ed Crewson asked Mono council not to abandon his town and area in favour of strengthening Orangeville/ Caledon's physician recruitment efforts.

Following the presentation, Mono Mayor Lorie Haddock promised her council would give the issue full consideration. However, when it comes to a council decision, the vote is likely to be divided.

The Shelburne area has been officially classed as "under-serviced" since 1998, when Shelburne was the first in the county to seek the designation.

Mayor Crewson said his recruitment committee sought to attract doctors by, among other things, visiting various medical faculties. "We recruited four. Two left. We had four (doctors) until March when Dr. (George) Vanderburgh retired." With more families to be served than in 1998, "we have only three doctors."

In 1999, Headwaters followed Shelburne's lead and secured the underserviced designation. Since then, Mayor Crewson said, Headwaters has recruited 13 physicians, of whom six have gone to Caledon, seven have remained in Orangeville, and none has gone to Shelburne.

Outlining a bit of history, he said Shelburne continued actively recruiting until 2002. Then, in 2003, the county put up $450,000 toward establishing a medical clinic adjacent to the hospital.

Now, in 2008, he said, Headwaters has asked Shelburne to collapse its recruitment committee and relinquish the underserviced designation. At the same time, it wants Mono to add that town's population to the Headwaters catchment area, and to take it away from Shelburne's.

"I would like to see how they make out recruiting (for Shelburne) before abandoning the designation." He said a withdrawal by Mono would weaken Shelburne's recruitment position. "If you leave us, it will weaken our ability to recruit."

Mono Deputy Mayor David Baldwin said that under current legislation, Mono must be wholly a part of one catchment area or the other, unlike 1999 when "one part of Mono could be rolled into Orangeville."

He said he was "in a moral bind. A lot of people in the south go to (Orangeville). Here we are in an all-or-nothing situation, when I know the majority go south."

Mono Councillor Jean- Gabriel Castel appeared to disagree that Orangeville is becoming adequately serviced. He said he knows of families who are still without a doctor. "We should join Headwaters for the majority (of Mono's population)," he said.

Mono Councillor Ken McGhee questioned why Dufferin County Council would put up county taxpayer dollars for a "Dufferin" physician recruitment when, in fact, the money was used for an Orangeville clinic and recruitment appears to have developed into an Orangeville/Caledon search.

"It's wrong that all residents don't have access to a doctor. The county has to look at what it's doing."

Councillor Laura Ryan was not at the meeting, so her position is unknown.

Outside the meeting, Mayor Haddock did not state how she would vote, but did cite an instance in which a senior citizen had died in Shelburne but had to be taken to the hospital in Orangeville to be pronounced dead, and then the body had to be returned to Shelburne for the undertaker.

In the meeting, Mr. Baldwin suggested that physicians are attracted to Orangeville and the clinic there because they would walk into a turn-key operation with computer access to all records.

Mayor Crewson said, however, that Shelburne's Mel Lloyd Centre offers much the same, but the new physicians aren't told about it.

Shelburne, he said, had brought in two students. When a recruiter from Headwaters came, it was the first time she had seen the Shelburne facility.

Mayor Crewson said that when the under-serviced designation was granted in 1997, Shelburne's catchment area had a population of 15,000 and a need for 10 doctors. Now, he said, the population has increased and the area has only three.