File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

Rec Fees

Kamloops council approves recreation user fee increases for 2023, 2025

Dec 13, 2022 | 4:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops council has approved increases to recreation user fees, but may have to hike them even higher if it wishes to decrease the burden on taxpayers.

At its regular meeting Tuesday (Dec. 13), council voted on a new schedule of fees that would see users pay five per cent more per hour in 2023 for dry floor facilities, natural turf fields and arena ice. Users will pay seven per cent more per hour for artificial turf fields and swimming pool lanes.

The fees will stay the same in 2024 and then increase by the same rates in 2025.

Image Credit: City of Kamloops

In the absence of new facilities being built, Recreation, Health and Wellness Supervisor Linda Stride noted some recreation groups have taken to sharing facilities with each other, thereby sharing costs as well. She noted a startling example of a U14 hockey team practicing on a half-sheet of ice, one hour per week, while another team uses the other half.

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“Our wellness of our community is dependent on what we can provide them to stay healthy,” noted Councillor Bill Sarai. “When we’re having 15-year-olds trying to get to the next level in hockey, sharing half a rink, that’s heartbreaking. That’s not what we’re about.”

Council has approved gradual fee increases for many years, but according to Stride, the city’s fees remain far lower than an average of four similar-sized cities in B.C. — Kelowna, Nanaimo, Prince George and Vernon.

Image Credit: City of Kamloops

Council has a stated goal of having recreation facility users covering 50 per cent of the cost of running recreation facilities, while city taxpayers subsidize the other 50 per cent. While that is close to reality with arenas and the Tournament Capital Centre, pools and fields lag far behind. Stride noted at present, users cover 27 per cent of the costs of operating the city’s aquatic facilites, and only 17 per cent of the operating costs of play fields.

Councillor Katie Neustaeter expressed her desire to see user fees reflect the goal of half-subsidization.

“We’ve said a unilateral increase this year by five per cent,” she noted, “but what does it look like to build a larger plan so that we come on par within the next five years, perhaps, so that we’re not continually catching up by five per cent grades as [other communities] are increasing their (fees) but we don’t actually make any footing?”

In addition to the increases, council also directed the city’s Community and Protective Services Committee to come up with a plan to sustainably move the city’s recreation facility users toward covering 50 per cent of facility operating costs.