Recreational fees bounced around - The Barrie Examiner - Ontario ...

Councillors meeting today to discuss ways to offset recreation costs through user fees

By Bob Bruton - Barrie Examiner

Posted 16 hours ago

The city is walking, if not yet running, toward greater cost recovery for Barrie recreation programs.

Councillors will meet and discuss measures today from city staff about a six-year strategy to recover 70% of recreation program costs through fees. The average now is 50%.

?It gets back to the question ... what is appropriate for people to be paying for in their general taxes and what is appropriate for people to be paying for on a user-basis?? Mayor Jeff Lehman said. ?If you use a program, you pay for it.?

?I think the principle of moving closer to a user-pay model makes sense for most people in a number of areas and services. The reality is at the end of the day someone has to pay the bill,? said Coun. Michael Prowse, chairman of the city finance committee.

?If the people using the program don?t pay for it, then we have to forward the bill to all of our residents through property tax increases,??he added.

Lehman says there?s a wide range of city subsidy on recreation programs ? everything from aquatics and fitness to day camps, skating, dance and minor sports.

?Right now, we?re all over the map,? he said. ?There are some things the City of Barrie subsidizes very, very heavily, where the general taxpayer is paying for certain kinds of recreation programs that a lot of people get a lot of benefit from. But we?re subsidizing the vast majority of the cost.

?There?s other areas, like fitness, for example, where we are pretty close to cost recovery already.?

Lehman says staff have done the first across-the-board report on how city recreation programs are paid for, factoring in facility costs as well.

The subsidy level for aquatics, for example, is 30% ? but factor in the facility and it jumps to 64%. Skating programs are almost entirely user-pay, with only 1% subsidy ? until the arena is counted. Then subsidy jumps to 70%.

Fitness programs are only 6% subsidized, and 94% user-pay, until the facilities become part of the equation. Then subsidy hits 42%.

?There?s never been a comprehensive look at this to say, these are the kinds of things we should subsidize very heavily because we want people to participate and we believe it has community benefit to keep the costs very low,? Lehman said.

He lists swimming lessons, for example, because Barrie is a waterfront city, right on Kempenfelt Bay. It?s safer if people can swim, so the cost for swimming lessons should be low.

?We subsidize kids sports quite heavily, generally,? Lehman said. ?My own opinion? That?s a good decision. We want to keep doing that, we want to encourage participation in youth sport as much as possible, for all kinds of good reasons.?

Lehman noted the registration fee is just one part of the cost of kids playing sports, and that equipment can be expensive, too.

Lehman said there might be other examples where the city is competing with the private sector, such as ballroom dancing, and the city subsidy could decrease.

?It?s also a legitimate question about whether we are undercutting the private sector,? he said.

Prowse said while the city wants to create and foster a healthy environment for all Barrie residents, he doesn?t believe that can only be done through full subsidies or giving away a service.

?In general people will pay for something they believe has value or provides a benefit,? he said. ?While you could make the argument you might get more people in your classes, courses and recreation facilities by simply giving away the product, I believe you can also get higher participation and a greater cost recovery through improving your product and controlling your costs at the same time.?

But increasing user fees and trying to attract more people to recreation programs could also be at odds.

?If you charge more for anything, some people are going to find that too expensive and are not going to use it,? Lehman said, ?so right off the bat we have to be very, very careful at any time when we increase user-fees when we are trying to increase participation, regardless of what that is.

?It?s possible one result of this strategy will be there are certain areas we want to subsidize further or maintain the high level of subsidy and not touch the fees at all.?

Prowse said city council set an initial 70% cost-recovery target, but there are other decisions to be made.

?I am sure that as we work through the process, there may be changes in that target as we evaluate how and the bigger question ?if? we should be delivering tomorrow the services that we do today,? he said.

bob.bruton@sunmedia.ca

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