Our Time To Act Is Now

Jump to Comments

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/ourgame/story/2009/01/20/orillia-rink-closure.html

This story should sound the alarm bells to communities like mine who have aging facilities and a city council who thinks we are fine with our existing facilities.

This week one of our city councilors introduced a motion to have our manager of Parks, Recreation & Leisure Services cease and desist his study into a private-public partnership on a three-pad arena that is very much needed in our town. The current facilities simply do not offer us the amount of ice time needed to meet the current demand for our programs. Many Rep Teams are forced to go out of town to practice several times per week, and other groups like Women’s (girl’s) hockey and sledge hockey do not run any programs here simply because there is no ice time available, and not because there is not a demand for these types of leagues.

One of the unions who represents our city’s outside workers recently forced the issue by holding a three day strike and making our city council agree in writing to hire union staff at any new facility before they returned to work.

Our city is in the process of replacing old water and sewer infrastructure and does not have the money to build new facilities on its own, with other projects like the expansion of our seniors’ centre and a new soccer complex being also considered. Our taxes are already some of the highest in the region, and unemployment seems to have hit us harder than other cities, due to the loss of many of our higher-paying manufacturing jobs.

Everyone realizes the tough economic times we are in, however, living with the status quo is no longer an option. It’s to the point that we cannot even throw money at the existing facilities in the hope that it will keep them running. We may be able to salvage some additional years from our Main Arena, with an investment of millions of dollars, however our Youth Arena will surely need to be closed in only a few years’ time, as our city council is fully aware (only two years ago our council approved emergency repairs to the roof of the Youth Arena in order to try to buy another ten years of service from it).

Our time to act is now. I encourage my city council to do the right thing and approve our Arena Feasibility Study Steering Committee’s recommendations to proceed with the study of a new three-pad facility so that we do not end up in the position which Orillia is now facing.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Sports Writing/Commentary

Tags: Arena, Sports Writing/Commentary