The town of Sackville is considering a $65,000 subsidy program to help local families cover fees for certain recreation programs.
The idea was born last fall when Sackville Minor Hockey and the Sackville Skating Club both made presentations to council asking for a further subsidy to their programs. Both pay substantial rink fees in order to operate in the Tantramar Memorial Civic Centre, and that expense gets carried along to families registering their kids for hockey and skating.
Town staff did not propose to lower the fees for the Civic Centre in 2021, but instead, gave council the option of spending some or all of a $65,000 council initiatives fund on helping with rink fees. (The council initiatives fund was also designated for a skatepark study, which is still in the works according to recreation director Matt Pryde, with a proposal coming soon from a consultant.)
This summer, staff came back to council with two options. The first would eliminate civic centre fees for youth programs, which would put them in line with Amherst, and also their own policy for field and gymnasium rentals, which are free for youth activities. That option would cost the town about $105,000.
The second option involved creating a rebate program, where youth who live in Sackville and pay fees for recreation programs could get a percentage back, up to a certain amount. That option was estimated to cost about $65,000.
Staff recommended in favour of option two, and council ultimately agreed. After a few months hammering out the details of how the program would work, a proposed policy was presented to council this past Monday, and will be up for approval at the next regular meeting, on Tuesday.
The proposal is for a two-year pilot policy which would reimburse 50% of registration fees, up to $300, for “any not-for-profit minor sport organization in Sackville that is required to pay a facility fee to operate.” The program would apply to kids aged four to 18.
The proposed policy rules out private recreations programs like dance and martial arts, and also programs like soccer or baseball, which use fields or gymnasiums that are provided for free to youth programs. The organizations that would qualify include Sackville Minor Hockey, Tantramar Lacrosse, the Sackville Skating Club and the Sackville Swim Club.
“The reason that we’re recommending those four particular organizations is because all four pay a substantial facility fee,” said recreation director Matt Pryde on Monday. “They all take place in a facility where they need to pay a large fee, which then results in a large registration fee for those children that are participating.”
Pryde said other sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, football are already subsidized through a reciprocal agreement with the school district, keeping their registration fees generally quite a bit lower.
Dance and martial arts do tend to have more expensive fees, but because they are operated as private businesses in Sackville, their participants won’t qualify. “We felt that it made more sense to focus the subsidy on nonprofit organizations that are based in Sackville to help increase their numbers to make them more sustainable,” says Pryde.
Residents would be asked to apply for the reimbursement, providing proof of residency, a child’s medicare card, and proof of purchase. The town also proposes to communicate with other sport subsidy programs to ensure that each resident is only being reimbursed up to 50% of what they have paid out of pocket. Residents will not have to demonstrate financial need to qualify for the reimbursement.
Councillor Sabine Dietz raised a concern over the policy on Monday, namely that the subsidy targets only specific sports.
“This seems to me a bit discriminatory, to just focus on those activities and not broaden it,” said Dietz to council on Monday. “When my kids were small, they were not participating in those sports, and we definitely had financial problems in getting them to participate in the recreational activities that they wanted to participate in,” said Dietz.
Treasurer Michael Beal responded to say that staff had tightened the scope of the subsidy plan once they started to crunch the numbers. With over 700 kids living within town limits, Beal said the program could not promise up to $300 per child, as the expense would exceed the $65,000 envelope available.
Beal said staff decided to concentrate on sports with large facility rental fees. “And then over the next few years, while it’s developing, and if it’s working, we can slowly try to expand that to other ones as well,” said Beal. “It is a lot easier to increase the budget a certain amount each year than to look at a $200,000 expense in one year.”
Dietz suggested that other remedies might be available, such as lowering the qualifying age to 16, or reducing the maximum amount of the subsidy.
Councillor Bruce Phinney chimed in with another criticism: that the program as proposed might end up subsidizing those that don’t need it. Phinney suggested that currently, the people with kids registered in more expensive sports appear to be able to afford the fees. “I’m looking at the number of kids that actually can’t afford, their families can’t afford at all, and that’s where I’d like to see the money go to. We seem to be providing for those that have, and not for those that don’t have.”
Councillor Allison Butcher responded to Phinney’s concern saying that the point of the program was to lower the fees so that more families would be able to consider the more expensive sports. Butcher said she felt the program would help level the playing field between sports, so that children would have more options.
“If you make $40,000 a year, and your child wants to play soccer, great,” said Butcher. “But if you make $40,000 a year and your child wants to play hockey…”
Butcher said the fee rebate would mean that, “all of a sudden, your child gets to choose rather than saying sorry, you can’t play hockey because we can’t afford that.”
Council will debate and decide on the proposed subsidy at their meeting on Tuesday, October 12, 2021.
