Community recreation fees are set to change in the district.
The third draft of the community recreation fees and charges bylaw is scheduled to come before council in March.
A total overhaul of the fees is necessary to increase revenue, according to district staff.
“We are at the place if we don’t see more revenue then we are going to have to cut somewhere,” said Tim Hoskin, director of recreation services, about the choices that face the district.
In 2009 a seven per cent fee increase was applied to rentals, admissions and campground fees, but this is the first time since 2003 sweeping changes to the bylaw have been proposed.
Some new fees are proposed in the bylaw.
Fees for the artificial turf fields ranging from $6.19 per hour for youth during non-prime time to $24.05 per hour for adults on the fields in prime time are being introduced.
Rental of district grass and gravel sports fields would be $6.25 for youth and $12.50 for adult per player per year.
A $4.76 fee for a replacement card for the centre is also new.
Other fees are potentially going up substantially.
Admission to public skating and swimming would jump to $11.19 for a family from $8.84.
The definition of family has been expanded to include up to two adults and four children or youth, Hoskin said.
A month pass for an adult would be $63.57, up from $58.86.
To rent the aquatic centre would increase to $199.05 from $180.46 per hour in prime time for adults.
Some fees, however, will either stay the same or go down.
“It seemed that some things were charged that didn’t match with the values of being equitable so we tried to go through as equitably as possible and if there were areas that were overpriced then we reduced them,” Hoskin said.
A children’s three-month pass for public skating and swimming is proposed to drop to $66.43 from $87.19 and a child’s 12-month pass drops to $190.48 from $251.90.
Hoskin said the proposed fees are either the lowest or close to the lowest of any municipality the district surveyed.
Two new initiatives, an Active 55 pass, which gives seniors discounts, and the Grade 6 pass, which provides eligible students free admission, are also proposed.
The rec centre is increasingly well used.
According to Hoskin, 12,000 recreation lovers passed through the centre over the first weekend of February. Over 512,000 people passed through the centre in 2015, he said.
“We are bursting at the seams,” Hoskin said. “It is exciting… but we need to make sure we have some revenue coming in to maintain that level of service.”
Something many residents don’t realize, according to Hoskin, is how heavily subsidized community recreation fees are.
“It is already incredibly subsidized,” Hoskin said, adding during several public consultation events district staff heard from residents that if fees are going up there should be more services.
“Of course if you and I went to buy a jug of milk from the store we have seen that incremental increase over the years,” he said.
“[But] year after year we have had to pay more in expenses, utilities, collective agreements, etcetera, but we haven’t seen that increase in revenue to match.”
Brennan Park Fields for example, bring in $23,000 per year, but have expenses of $364,000. Therefore $341,000 comes from taxation, meaning the fields have a six per cent recovery rate.
Fees are scheduled to take effect April 1. To see the proposed bylaw go to, squamish.ca and search for Funding Community Recreation.
