City council has updated the parks and recreation department’s arena usage policy, which provides guidance on scheduling practices and programming at municipal-owned arenas and provides annual timelines for arena bookings.
Some of the main changes include:
- establishing clear timelines about availability related to usage with ice and sports courts;
- changing the returning ice deadline to Sept. 1 from Sept. 15 to better assist with scheduling ice prior to opening arenas;
- removing rush ice as a per-participant rate and replacing it with an early morning rate from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.;
- removing procedures about signage from the policy;
- removing ringette and summer ice since these programs do not exist in Moose Jaw; and
- changing language to reflect today’s electronic communications.
During the recent city council meeting, council voted unanimously to approve the updated arena usage policy, while also including a clause that there be a minimum dollar figure for insurance.
No insurance dollar figure was presented in one section of the policy, when the normal liability is $2 million to $5 million, said Coun. Scott McMann. He would have preferred to see some figure added for liability purposes.
“It seems inconsistent with every other city policy that I’ve ever seen (that) has an amount in there,” he added. “Maybe we just need to have a general policy that says … $5 million or alternate number or something and refer to that always. We should be consistent from policy to policy.”
The parks department left that dollar figure blank since it could change at any time, explained parks director Derek Blais. The usual amount of insurance liability the department would request is $5 million.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Oct. 19.
