Northern Sport Centre Looks to Revise Fees
Prince George, B.C.- The Northern Sport Centre has made great strides when it comes to increasing its membership base. There were 2493 members during the fiscal year that ended at the end of March 2012. That compares to just 388 memberships in the fiscal year which ended March 2010.
Chair of the Northern Sport Centre Board of Directors, Cliff Dezell, says the community has embraced the facility and recognizes it is not part of the University of Northern B.C. and that it is their facility.
Financially, the Northern Sports Centre, is still subsidized by the City each year to the tune of $300 thousand dollars. UNBC also pumps $300 thousand into the Sports Centre. But the facility has to come up with the balance of its $1.3 million dollar budget.
"The money the City provides buys time for those who use the facilty " says Dezell, who notes without those funds, the cost to rent a field surface in the Centre would be triple what is being charged now.
According to the financial report presented to Prince George City Council this evening, the Sport Centre finished off the fiscal year with a $72 thousand dollar surplus. That money is being added to the capital reserve fund for the centre. The reserve fund stands at $792,428.00 but is still shy of the $2 million the Board would like to have on hand for capital upgrades or repairs.
"The rates we have right now, are the same rates we charged five years ago" says Dezell as he says the rates are under review and new membership rates will be increased by 5% this fall. "That will be for new memberships only, not renewals" says Dezell.
Dezell says one of the questions they need to answer is, what is the capacity of the building? "We know the capacity of the track, it is 150 people at any one time, but what is the capacity of the squash courts, the field house? This is something we need to know as we plan for the future."
Dezell says while the Sports Centre would like to offer more programs for moms and their children, they know affordability is an issue.
He also says there are some design issues and efficiency issues with the building which are being examined.
Comments
Don’t get me wrong, I think having the Sports Centre is a good thing for the City. But wait one second, $1.3M budget and $600K is covered by the Taxpayers of PG and UNBC which is basically a round about way of saying the Province(or again taxpayers). What’s wrong with this picture?
Now if you think about it, the UNBC students likely get a fair amount of use out of this facility, so the $300K from UNBC might make sense. Then the members pay to use the facilities, so again that makes sense. But the City of PG paying for this, that is where it sounds a little goofy. What is the City getting out of their $300K???? Do they get City employees to use the facilities for free or City meetings held here or something?
If I was the Mayor I would be asking some tuff questions, like what exactly is the plan to become self sufficient?
The student’s and staff of UNBC still pay users fees on top of the $300,000 that is given to the centre.
I have a membership there. Best place in town to work out.
Best place in town to workout doesn’t say much. For a school that is to enter the CIS this upcoming school year, the facility, apart from the basketball courts and stands, are barely adequate at best.
Why the sport centre couldn’t be modelled after the facility in Kamloops beats me.
Its a rip off for the university students too IMO. Affordability for an education is enough as it is with the high tuition fees. Paying double for all the extra societies, and forced gym dues is ridiculous.
“Why the sport centre couldn’t be modelled after the facility in Kamloops beats me.”
The Centre is called Tournament Capital Centre, which says it all to me.
http://events.tru.ca/place/tournament-capital-centre
We have to remember that this started off as primarily a UNBC project with an attempt at a full fledged P3 project. They failed to get an operator. So the City came to the rescue after the fact.
People say it is a “success story” which is, of course, the PC thing to say, because there are no failuers. Even our roads are not a failure. They are caused by where we live, not by what we fail to do.
We also have to remember that TRU is the old Cariboo College which turned into a University. So, they have twice the student population and the sports facilities are divided between two post secondary institutions in PG.
We also have a high quality competition pool. I think having a second one of that calibre would have been overkill – unless the city would get rid of the Four Seasons Pool.
But, all that would require planning. I mean, look at the difficulty in deciding about the WIC and a possbile engineering school – downtown or university …downtown or university ….. downtown or university … in the end that is partly what it is all about … a power struggle.
Cut a litle funding to the Northern Sports Centre and support real local activity like the PGX. After all, the University should be a self sustaining entity. It’s not a power struggle, it’s ridiculous.
“After all, the University should be a self sustaining entity”
It should? Why? What about elementary and secondary schools? Should they be self sustaining as well?
For what it is worth, I used the NSC when I still lived in PG and thought it was a great facility for the city. The only suggestion I may have sort of ties into what gus is taking about. Why not look into consolidating services at various facilities throughout the city if they are not all at capacity? Could there be some net savings as a result?
I think someone should check out their numbers.
That is a huge increase in members. I think that the students are considered members even though they do not pay membership fee’s. The number of paying members excluding the students would be much closer to the 388 number.
Im not sure what kind of creative accounting is being used here, however it seems pretty obvious that this facility is not self supporting, and in fact relies on a $600,000.00 yearly subsidy to keep operating.
The original proposal put forward by Dezell showed that it would be self supporting, so once again we are dealing with pie in the sky figures.
We already pay school taxes as a public partner in education. The additional money allocated by the City for a Legacy building for Charles Jago is not within the parameters of post secondary educational funding envelopes. If elementary or secondary education facilities desperatly needed a new gym or a minor building addition they would need to find the money from within. Same should apply to the UNBC.
I am confident that the City of PG has never coughed up an annual subsidy to support them. Councillor Hall could certainly enlighten them on this!
One thing to think about NMG are the tutition fees paid by students. Public schools = 0 dollars (covered by school tax levies paid by all taxpayers)and Students going door to door selling chocolates to buy some new books for their library or almost any other “beyond the VERY BASIC” need.
Post Secondary = a combination of provincial government funding (Again covered by the Taxpayers), research grants, out of control tutition fees as well as large Coroprate and Philantropic donations.
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