Community facility rates increasing in Swift Current starting Sept. 1
Rates for the use of various community facilities in Swift Current will increase between one and five per cent this fall as a result of an annual rate review.
Council members approved the rate increases for the different facilities during a regular City council meeting, April 1.
The new rates will be in effect from Sept. 1, 2024 to Aug. 31, 2025. Councillor Tom Christiansen commented that even in the case of income generating facilities the revenue recovery does not come close to the cost to operate them.
“I just want to point out to everyone that even though we’re having very minor increases, we’re still only returning about half of what it costs to run these things,” he said. “So the taxpayers are still subsidizing every person that goes in there approximately half of every dollar spent. I think it’s important that everyone understands that even though we’re trying to operate as efficiently as we can, there’s no possible way of charging enough to completely do it based on user fees.”
This annual rate review of Community Services facilities excludes cemetery and golf course fees, because the rates for those services are reviewed and approved separately by City council.
City General Manager of Community Services Nicole Spenst said it is an ongoing and challenging task to
forecast, set and monitor facility rates. It involves the calculation of future operational expenses and setting of revenue targets to meet designated recovery rates.
Several factors have in impact on operational costs, including electricity, gas, water, wages, contractor costs, carbon tax, materials and equipment.
“So as those continue to increase, we try to find the balance of what our facility rate increases need to be,” she said. “Our goal is to ensure that there’s still user affordability. We do community comparisons and also look at our community as a whole and what they can afford on a daily basis to pay in order to utilize those facilities.”
Those community comparisons indicate the facility rates in Swift Current are competitive with those in other municipalities.
“For the most part, we are average or below the high end of the rates in communities,” she said. “We look at different communities comparable in size, such as Melville and Yorkton. We also look at Moose Jaw and other ones that have facilities that are operated a little bit differently, but just to ensure that our facility rates are not exceeding the standard in the province, but are affordable for our community as well.”
Community Services facilities in Swift Current are divided into minimal or non-revenue generating and revenue generating facilities.
The ball diamonds, tennis courts, outdoor rinks, soccer pitches, beach volleyball courts, park rentals, arts and culture are among the minimal or non-revenue generating facilities.
The main revenue generating facilities are the Innovationplex, Aquatic Centre, S3 Arenas, Lt. Colonel Clifton Centre, Dickson Community Centre, Fairview Pool and Kinetic Park.
“These facilities generate revenues from users who pay a fee to use them,” she said. “The user fees offset the operational expenses of the facility.”
Administration has been following the past direction from City council that revenue generating facilities have to recover 40 per cent of overall facility operating costs.
“We have a strategic rate review that we do each council cycle, just to see where they want that projection to be, and 40% is something that council has been very comfortable with for the last little while,” she said. “That also comes into play with how much can users afford to pay to use the facility. So it can be a moving target based on council and what we’re seeing in other communities, but right now we feel very confident that it’s a nice average balance between tax usage and user pay usage to allow people to enjoy the fantastic parks, green spaces and recreational facilities that we do have in our community.”
Spenst noted revenue generating facilities recovered 49 per cent in 2023, budgeted 43 per cent for 2024 and the projections for 2025 are 44 per cent.
The standard recommended rate increases for 2024-25 vary between different facilities and activities. There will be one per cent rate increases on aquatic facility rates, aquatic general admissions and aquatic programming (with some exceptions).
The three per cent rate increase will apply to arena ice rates, dry floor surface rates, community garden rentals, banquet and meeting room rentals, extra revenue rentals, all park rentals, camping, art gallery rates and museum rates. The five per cent rate increase will be on athletic field per player rates and on all rates for the Lt. Colonel Clifton Centre and the Dickson Community Centre.
This variance in the standard recommended rate increases reflects the intention to keep rates at an affordable level.
“For example, at the Aquatic Centre we’re zero to one per cent increase due to the fact that we’re already at the high level and based on what we offer at the pool, we want to ensure that people are still coming out and utilizing that facility,” she said. “We don’t want to push the cost of usage to a point where we don’t have patrons in the building. That’s where we try to manage and find that balance there. That’s why the increase at the Aquatic Centre for instance is lower than what you might see at some of our rates for parks, such as our athletic fee per person usage cost.”