5500 “skating visits” -whatever the hell that means- over 38 days equates to 145 “visits” per day. And they want how many million for a refrigeration unit?

How many of those 5500 “visits” are unique? 500? 1000?

It means that they count each time a person visited the facility and actually skated, whether for 10 minutes or 2 hours. Duration of visit is not counted.

If a person came, put on skates, tried them out, left, and then came back later in the day it is 2 skating visits.

There might be better ways of counting, depending on what one wanted to find out.

However, we have that as a count.

What we really need is to apply the same methodology to other City facilities.
Start with indoor skating facilities and use only the frequency of ice surface users .. i.e. skaters

What is the comparable frequency of users of Kin I, Kin II, Kin III for instance for the number of operating days.

Depending on how one counts user visits for a game of hockey, for instance, it could be a huge sum if each time a player steps on the ice after a rest is called a skating visit. A practice of the same number of people will result in a much lower number.

As long as one makes sure that the methodology is similar, I would be surprised if the 5,500 skating visits over 38 operating days is much different between the two types of facilities.

Of course, indoor hockey facilities are considerably more expensive. At the moment, without a refrigerated track, the oval is likely cheaper to build and operate, especially considering the amount of volunteer time dedicated to the oval.

t could be that with a refrigerated track the facility would still be less expensive per skating visit.

But, without someone at the City giving us those counts, we will never know,

It is called transparency in governance.

I am not sure how they do the count. I have skated there and don’t think I’ve been counted, didn’t realize they were even doing that.

It appears they have an automated counter and have had it since 2003.

princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/agendas/2011/2011_05_09/documents/Deleg_Ice_Oval_MERGED.pdf

from that source: “The on-site counter registered 7471 visitors to the oval during the season. The counter does not discriminate between skaters and volunteers doing maintenance, but oval maintenance did not take place daily, and would only register a few counts each time.”

Technology is amazing. Perhaps they could use facial recognition software and send a bill to the house to those who do not pay ….. :-)