Northern Sport Centre Wraps Year With Surplus
Monday, June 24, 2013 @ 6:23 PM
.jpg)
Prince George, B.C. – If it weren’t for the annual infusion of $300 thousand dollars from the City of Prince George, many of the rates for use of the Northern Sport Centre would be priced out of reach for youth groups. That was the message delivered to Prince George City Council by NSC Chair Cliff Dezell.
The Northern Sport Centre had just over 3200 members for the fiscal year that ended March 31st. That’s nearly 10 times the number of members (388) at the end of the 2010 fiscal year.
The Northern Sport Centre has wrapped up it’s fiscal year with a surplus of just under $250 thousand dollars, money that has been put into the capital reserve fund. The NSC hopes to have a reserve fund of $2 million dollars to cover the costs of future repairs and equipment upgrades.
Dezell says the challenge facing the NSC now, is working out a schedule that will provide the space for some Canada Winter Games events, but will also allow members to continue to have access to the NSC.
Comments
300k from the city, they end up with a surplus of 250k, does that mean they only lost 50k this year? Where did the 2 mill they made go? Over priced help is probably a lot of it.
They also get $300,000.00 from UNBC so in fact they are subsidized to the tune of $600,000.00 per year.
Who gets the parking meter dough?
Palopu you are correct. It makes you wonder if there are actually reporters covering city hall or just sheep that regurgitate spin.
If the city kicks in $300,000 of taxpayers money and the university kicks in another $300,000 then the $250,000 is simply an allocated amount for a dedicated capital reserve. It is a balanced budget that has taxpayers kicking in $600,000 a year with users paying about a $1m.
By using the term “surplus”, at best it leaves the impression that the facility is not subsidized which it clearly is and at worst, it gives the impression that it is actually making money, which it isn’t.
It is a great facility that is well used but IMO transparency in reporting its financial statements could be improved.
Heeelllllooooo,,,,Transparency? we are talking about Prince George here……….
It states the money is going into capital reserve funds. We know all about organizations who do not do that and have to loan money for projected repairs.
One is to deal with the artificial turf. Seems it has to be maintained and they may end up buying a machine to do that. Wonder when they found out they would have to do that, before they decided to build the premises or after?
The one which has me considerably worried is that they may have to repair the metal roof sooner than later. Something to do with a winter climate and the supposed larger than normal expansion and contraction in these climates. If that is the case within the first 10 years, the first 20 years or even the first 30 years, there is something wrong with the design. I would want to go back to the designer/builder (it was a design build of the cheap kind) to ask some pointed question of why they turned over such a low quality building.
When I first went into that building shortly after it was opened the first thing I noticed was the poor quality of the concrete floor and stair treads. The amount of uncontrolled cracking should never have happened. Improper design and or quality control during installation and likely curing stage. If they had put any kind of tile over that, those cracks are large enough that the tiles would also have cracked in most places.
They presented some numbers in the report to Council.
The building opened in 2007, but for some reason or other, the reports of membership numbers and facility use by those members did not start till april 2009. Not sure why.
Memberships appear to be annual, although they can be paid on a monthly basis. Currently they cost between $400 to $600 depending on the type of individual ranging from senior to adult. I would think that would limit access to a select group of the population.
Here are the figures given over the past 4 years for members and % increase over previous year plus annual visits per member: (may be that low because they may not have started recruiting till winter)
2009/10 â¦.. 388 â¦.. n/a â¦â¦. 354
2010/11 â¦. 1,753 â¦.. 351% â¦â¦ 91
2011/12 â¦. 2,493 â¦.. 42.2% â¦â¦ 111
2012/13 ⦠3,208 â¦.. 28.7% â¦â¦ 69
Here are the figures for new members, cumulative new members over the years, and the percentage of the annual members retained of the total new members recruited over the years.
2009/10 â¦.. 331
2010/11 â¦. 1,487â¦â¦.1,818 â¦â¦. 96.4%
2011/12 â¦. 1,994 â¦.. 3,812 â¦â¦. 65.4%
2012/13 ⦠2,036 â¦â¦..5,848 ⦅. 54.9%
When I look at those figures they seem to indicate that the NSC is facing a retention problem if this continues. In addition, based on average visits per member the active members are no longer as active as they were.
So, if I had been on Council and read the report for my Council preparation, I would have formed some questions around that.
But, maybe people did not do their homework, perhaps they did not understand the figures they were looking at, or they did not want to cast a negative shadow over an organization they still have a $300thousand/year funding agreement with.
I would want to have an educated opinion of what a steady state NSC operation would look like in another couple of years or so. If they are good operators, they should know that by now or be seriously working on knowing that by the time the next report is made to Council.
Oh, btw, that figure of 8 times increase over the base year is there only because the base year was an anomaly likely based on the start of the recruitment. With a well advertised and promoted initial year, and lower membership rates for founding members, the first year’s figure should have been a considerably larger number, even a number higher than any subsequent year.
If you use the year 2008/09 instead, when there were presumably no members, the percentage increase to the present would have been infinitely large.
Fun with numbers …. ;-)
One more thing I forgot.
If it is the policy to set aside money into a capital account for expected or planned future maintenance, which is an excellent policy, why would the money be considered as surplus?
Just trying to figure out whether the NSC is a well run operation or a “by the luck of the draw” type of operation.
Gus. Your right about the roof. A few years ago they had buckets strategically placed to catch the water leaking from the roof.
The NSC has two shareholders ie; UNBC and the City of Prince George. These shareholders each contribute $300,000.00 a year to help run the facility. This arrangement was set up by Mayor Kinsley and was referred to as **Creative Accounting** and so it is.
The report shows **other expenses** of over a million dollars I don’t know what that is all about.
In any event it seems we can contribute money to this facility so they can hold it in a reserve fund for future maintenance, however at the same time we have no money for maintenance of other facilities that are in dire need.
The City is involved up to their butts in this facility, and that is why they can get away with the type of reports they issue.
The report was presented by Cliff Dezell, long time City Councillor. Seems to me that Soltis, and Babicz are also on the board.
Comments for this article are closed.