MOOSE JAW — During its upcoming budget discussions, city council will consider possibly implementing a facility improvement fee at all recreation venues for next year to support capital upgrades at these places.
Such a fee would be applied to hourly rentals, memberships, admissions or participant fees at all indoor and outdoor venues, with that excess revenue being directed to a capital replacement fund, which would be used exclusively for recreation venue improvements, a council report said.
The costs of capital renewal projects continue to rise and place increasing pressure on the municipality’s ability to replace and repair infrastructure, the document added.
“That (facility improvement fee) would be a big change from previous years … ,” Derek Blais, director of community services, said during the Nov. 25 regular city council meeting while discussing the proposed 2025 parks and recreation rates and fees.
“Based on current usage numbers, we would currently project approximately $73,000 a year would be generated through this fee that would go into the reserve,” he continued. “And the request to access the reserve would be done through the annual budget process with council if there were specific projects in mind.
“But, essentially, it’s just another funding source for our capital projects to upgrade our facilities.”
This improvement fee would be applied on top of the base fee that recreation users pay, although the parks and recreation branch is proposing that there be no increase to the latter category next year, added Blais. Instead, the focus would be on implementing the improvement fee “to keep things affordable” for users; this fee would remain the same annually thereafter while the base fee would continue to increase yearly.
Rates and fees for 2025
For next year, city hall wants to increase turf rentals by $2.50 per hour, outdoor spaces, sports grounds and diamonds by $3 per hour per participant, minor and adult ice rentals by $5 per hour, and drop-in admissions by 50 cents, monthly memberships by $4, three-month memberships by $8 and annual memberships by $16, the report said.
All the revenue generated from these increases would support the facility improvement fee project.
The report noted that the new improvement fees would generate an extra $46,036 next year and $73,307 starting in 2026 and beyond.
Furthermore, the department plans to remove the student rate for youths older than age 18 because there has been a low uptake of this feature and an increased “administrative burden” to determine whether people are full-time college students, the report said.
Also, with rental rates, parks and rec is eliminating a clause that gave users a discount between 25 per cent and 75 per cent if they rented a venue for consecutive days.
Revenues and expenses
For next year, parks and rec expects to see revenues of $2,260,503 and expenses of $4,576,776, for a total subsidy requirement of $2,316,373 — which represents a cost recovery of 49 per cent.
In comparison, those numbers this year were, respectively, $2,069,275, $4,418,285, $2,349,910 and 47 per cent. This means the total subsidy cost next year should decrease by $33,637 and the cost recovery should increase by two percentage points.
During the meeting, council voted unanimously to forward the proposed 2025 parks and recreation rates and fees — including the potential facility improvement fee — to its upcoming budget deliberations.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Dec. 2.
