INNISFAIL - The town has been given an early Christmas gift through a new five-year Recreation and Culture Agreement with Red Deer County that will see an additional $210,000 for each of the first three years and more than $258,000 in the fourth and fifth years.
The new deal, scheduled to go before Innisfail town council on Nov. 12, calls for the county contribution to the town to increase from $131,100 to $341,030 during the first three years of the five-year deal. In the final two years the county's annual contribution will increase to $389,790.
And while it brings plenty of good cheer to the town, the county is equally pleased to move forward with an agreement that will bring multiple benefits to its ratepayers, and is fair compensation to the Town of Innisfail.
"We want to make sure we are paying our fair share, and we came up with a great (agreement) between both of our administrations with a number I believe is fair," said county mayor Jim Wood, noting county ratepayers' usage of Innisfail facilities will help with the town's operational expenses. "This number is not going to give Innisfail a profit. This number is going to help Innisfail cover their costs.
"What has happened is that when numbers have not been changed for a long period of time they become outdated, and where we are at right now is fair compensation to Innisfail," added Wood. "I think the important thing is that we could have provided all these venues for our ratepayers to utilize without Innisfail. I think it is a win for both of us."
In recent years the town has become increasingly concerned with growing maintenance costs for its aging recreational facilities, notably the Arena and aquatic centre, which are both more than 30 years old.
"We have to get ahead of the game here. We are falling behind. This is going to be an opportunity," said Mayor Jim Romane, noting the Arena and aquatic centre pool have an annual million-dollar deficit, and more than 40 per cent of users are county residents. "We've been negotiating with the county on what we consider what would be their fair share to help us out with offsetting those deficit operations. They have been very good about the negotiations."
Meanwhile, the additional monies from the 2018 - 22 agreement come at an important time for the Town of Innisfail as senior officials at town hall predicted during the recent utility franchise fee process that the 2019 budget deliberations, which begin later this month, would be challenging, largely due to expected diminishing assessment values.
"It goes directly into our operational revenues," said Todd Becker, the town's chief administrative officer, emphasizing the new monies will be arriving in 2018 because the previous five-year agreement with the county expired at the end of 2017. "Revenues go up as does our expenses yearly to operate our facilities, so this comes at a pretty important time for us because things are getting more expensive to operate."
The agreement passed by Red Deer County council on Oct. 30 noted the county's newly negotiated annual payment to the town ensures Red Deer County ratepayers have access to Innisfail facilities and programs and are entitled to the same registration fee as town residents. The agreement passed by county council also noted there is a clause outlining a dispute resolution mechanism.
The new deal between the two municipalities covers all recreation and culture facilities operated by the town, including the Arena, outdoor fields, the aquatic centre, gymnasiums, cemetery, community halls and the curling rink.
The county's annual contribution helps cover only operating and maintenance costs for the town’s recreation facilities. While the agreement stipulates the county will not cover any capital costs, it does say the rural municipality will address requests for capital contributions on a case-by-case basis, as it did with the new Sylvan Lake multiplex. In 2015 county council approved a contribution of $1,418,025 over two years towards the new Sylvan Lake recreational facility, which opened in March of 2017 at a total cost of almost $40 million.
"They (Sylvan Lake) made a request to us. We had people sitting on that committee," said Wood. "We want to make sure on a case by case that we recognize that our people are going to use it. As a council we would not necessarily put money in but if it makes sense our council would have that deliberation."
