Imagine you are a business owner.
Your business is in the recreation industry – you operate an arena with a swimming pool and recreation centre (gym) – and your business is located in a municipality that neighbours multiple towns and townships.
Your business has costs associated with it to the tune of $1.1 million annually.
How do you pay for those costs? In this case, you would have revenues from ice rentals and admission at the swimming pool. You would also have membership revenue from the gym.
In a perfect world, those revenues would match your expenses, or better yet, surpass them so you have a little profit at the end of the year to save for a rainy day or to take home for yourself.
Instead, your find yourself with a deficit each year. There could be several reasons for this – lower than expected revenues due to a pandemic, increased costs such as hydro and cleaning supplies – some that are beyond your control.
So how do you deal with this deficit? Do you reduce offerings to lower your cost? Do you find efficiencies in staffing?
Or do you go to those neighbours and ask for money?
If this business scenario sounds familiar to you, you may be a member of Morris-Turnberry, Howick or North Perth councils.
The business in question is the North Huron recreation department, which in recent weeks has sent letters to the above councils seeking financial support.
At Morris-Turnberry’s Jan. 17 budget meeting, the ask from North Huron was revealed to be $242,000. On Jan. 18, Howick was asked to contribute $102,325, and on Monday night North Perth was asked by North Huron to contribute $53,599.
These amounts, according to the letter sent to all three municipalities, has taken into consideration the COVID-19 funds received from the province for COVID-related expenses.
The letter, written by North Huron Clerk Carson Lamb, further asks each respective council to consider the request “so that the fixed costs required to provide recreational services… are borne both by the residents of area municipalities and the Township of North Huron.”
As you can imagine, the reaction from all three municipalities was… well, they reacted.
Morris-Turnberry, as readers of the Wingham Advance Times will know, has been in a lengthy battle with North Huron over shared services – one that is too lengthy to detail in this space today. At its budget meeting on Jan. 17, Morris-Turnberry council asked staff to find out where North Huron got its numbers from before making a decision on the request.
North Perth had a similar reaction on Monday night, with Coun. Alan Rothwell wondering if this request has been made by North Huron in previous years.
And Howick’s reaction was more, shall we say, light hearted?
“Maybe they are just throwing this against the wall to see what sticks,” Reeve Doug Harding commented at Howick’s Jan. 18 meeting. Howick council then filed the letter for information and took no action.
In North Huron’s defence, it’s worth a shot, right?
I think it is fair to say that in this part of Ontario – perhaps all of Ontario – municipalities don’t look at recreation as a business, but rather a service to the community. The goal of recreation departments is to offer programs and services to the community while being fiscally responsible.
And North Huron is trying to find a way to find additional revenue without cutting services.
However, asking your neighbour for a big fat cheque is not the answer.
As a business owner, sometimes you have to sit down and ask yourself hard questions about your business model. And sometimes you have to come to the realization that in order to grow, or survive, it means making cuts or changing the way you do things.
Perhaps it’s time for North Huron to take a long, hard look in the mirror and start asking itself tough questions.
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Mike Wilson is the editor of Midwestern Newspapers. Comments and feedback can be sent to mwilson@midwesternnewspapers.com.
