Photo by Curtis Galbraith

By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

City councillor asks city staff to look at cost recovery at Eastlink Centre

Jul 13, 2019 | 7:00 AM

A city councillor is asking city staff to look for cost recovery at the Eastlink Centre.

This came after a city committee was presented with a report that said the budgeted deficit for the Eastlink Centre is $10,522,968 for this year.

This amounts to a 64 per cent subsidy from taxpayers on the facility as total revenue is budgeted at $5,891,003.00.

Wade Pilat is asking administration to look at all four areas of the facility: aquatics, field house, fitness centre and walking track, and programming.

“I just think there’s a lot of data within the report we got (and) I’d like to find some bite sounds within that data. I think if we look at those flour areas specifically, we can maybe use that information to get a true cost recovery on the facility itself.”

He does not anticipate a great change in that deficit right away.

“It might lead into conversations later on about why we do some of the things we do at the Eastlink Centre, potentially where we need to add capital. I also think it’s more the city is undertaking looking at some of the other facilities we use and if we know what our utilization and cost recoveries are on some of these facilities, it probably makes council decisions easier moving forward. Do we need a field house or not? What does it cost to run a filed house?”

Debt principal and interest payments account for $4,485,051.00 of that deficit

Councillor Dylan Bressey suggested having people who do not live in Grande Prairie pay more to use the Eastlink Centre. That idea was rejected out of fears city residents would be charged more to use recreational facilities in other communities.

That same report said 3013 membership units had been sold as of the end of May, with 83 per cent of those going to city residents.