By Kathy Gallant

RM and City of Meadow Lake navigate recreation costs

Oct 25, 2017 | 4:59 PM

The financial agreements surrounding recreation costs are currently up in the air between the Rural Municipality (RM) of Meadow Lake and the City of Meadow Lake.

Last week, city council received a letter from the RM cancelling their current four-year agreement, effective Dec. 31, 2017. Currently, the RM contributes $100,000 per year towards the cost of running the city’s various recreation facilities, like the arena and pool among others.

The document, which was signed at the beginning of 2017, was originally meant to last until Dec. 31, 2020, but both have the option to opt out with 30 days’ notice.

RM Reeve Tim McKay said council sent the letter as a means to open a dialogue, adding the RM would like to take a closer look at actual user numbers of the facilities. The RM has a population of roughly 2,800 people.

“As a council our responsibility is to our ratepayers, and how money is spent, how much is spent and where it’s spent, we have to figure out the most reasonable return for our tax dollar,” he said.

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He said the RM and the city have a positive working relationship, and that there’s always room for negotiation and discussion. He added if the two sides can work something out before Dec. 31, the RM may consider staying on the current agreement.

“We’ll see how the dialogue progresses, but if you don’t send a notification of cancelation then how do you know where you’re sitting?” McKay said. “Maybe we owe more money than the city is asking for. If we did a proper count, [then we would] know what we owe and we can go from there.”

Meadow Lake Mayor Gary Vidal said he looked forward to continuing talks on the matter in a fair, honest and open manner, but garnering more exact numbers might be a difficult task. He said the $100,000 per year price tag was calculated a number of years ago and is a fraction of what it costs to run the city’s various facilities.

Vidal added Meadow Lake city council strives to work with its various partners, like the RM, Flying Dust, Dorintosh and others, to ensure the communities are sharing costs appropriately.

“We want to make sure that people in the City of Meadow Lake aren’t paying for somebody else’s services, so we want to find ways to do this fairly, and protect the interest of our taxpayers. We’re just going to move forward, but we’re going to do it in a positive way.”

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca  

On Twitter @ReporterKath