Minimum wage hike will cost performing arts centre an extra $79,000 next year
FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre executive director Steve Solski hopes fundraising efforts will reduce the impact of the facility on city coffers, despite increasing costs.
While the cost of running the facility is expected to increase slightly to $5.33 million next year — primarily due to the increasing minimum wage — Solski said the net budget is expected to drop to $1.46 million, more than $49,000 less than this year.
“Our expenditures are flat and we are continuing to grow our revenue,” Solski said while presenting the PAC’s proposed 2018 budget at a committee meeting Monday night.
While Solski said he is anticipating as much as $100,000 next year in sponsorships and donations, a board will need to be developed “to run the centre and help us on the donations and sponsorship end of it.”
He said the PAC will face some challenges next year.
For instance, the cost of casual labour is expected to increase by more than $94,000, to $936,612. And most of that increase — $79,000 — “is due to the increase in the minimum wage,” poised to increase to $14 an hour on Jan. 1.
He said future challenges are to continue to grow revenue to offset the rising costs of running the venue and inflation.
As new competition grows in the area, including a performance venue being constructed in Niagara Falls, and fluctuations in entertainers who are available, he said the PAC needs to “build a reserve to offset the risk of programming.”
“Every year, we’re very close to sales targets and as we continue to go on we feel there’s a risk associated with not meeting revenue targets in sales,” he said.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said grants the organization hopes to obtain should be included in the budget as well.
“There is no federal or provincial grant projections in this budget,” he said. “Is there a reason for that?”
Replied Solski, “The issue with grants is that they’re not guaranteed, so we don’t believe in budgeting for them until we have them.”
The PAC did receive close to $400,000 for its Celebration of Nations Indigenous performing and visual arts events, and “we’re still trying to get money for that program for next year, but the grant program deadlines aren’t until this fall and we won’t know until spring if we will get that money.”
“We didn’t feel budgeting for it would be prudent,” Solski said.
Sendzik said everything in a proposed budget is fictitious.
“You’re just putting numbers in a column and saying we hope that we hit these targets,” he said.
But excluding grants, he said, indicates that “we’re not open, there’s no hope.”
Instead, Sendzik said the city should “take opportunities to get grants seriously, and we should be projecting what we hope to get out of them and then we work like mad to get them.”