The Sea to Sky School District wants cash from VANOC, and it has hired former realtor and current Village of Pemberton Councillor Ted Craddock to negotiate the use of space in its school during the Olympics.
"We needed someone with experience because we expect VANOC will have its own negotiators," said Dave Walden, school board chair. "In relation to the Olympics, we are looking for cash, not in-kind donations."
Craddock will negotiate deals with a number of organizations but the main negotiations are with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), which has shown interest in renting out Whistler Secondary.Craddock said he is unable to comment about his role during sensitive negotiations with VANOC.
Walden said the district intends to use some of the money from a potential VANOC deal to pay for the creation of day camps during the Olympics as well as costs related to the 2010 Games.
"The expenses related to the Olympics are mounting and we have no special allowance for this type of thing in our budget," Walden said. "If we can receive money from the rental of district facilities, it would help with the possibility of running day camps."
Walden said the school board is looking into the possibility of day camps for Whistler, Pemberton and Squamish.
In 2007, VANOC requested that all four high schools in the Sea to Sky Corridor be closed to accommodate volunteers and other workforce during the Olympics. VANOC did not make the same request for elementary schools.
In the end, it was decided that all elementary schools would close for a spring break during the Games while high schools in Pemberton and Squamish would close for two weeks. The Whistler high school would close for three weeks.
"We have to be sensible in terms of renting out our facilities. There will be rules because a teacher's classroom is personal space in many ways. We have to be sensitive about the way things are taken care of and restored," Walden said.
VANOC is not the only organization seeking to rent school space during the Olympics. Nancy Edwards, district secretary treasurer, said national sport organizations are also interested. She said the district plans to wait until VANOC negotiations are complete before moving forward with other requests because that deal could impact potential day programs.
"We have not dealt with other interested parties yet because we want to deal with the VANOC request first. Some teams are looking for dry land training space," Edwards said. "But we may want to use those elementary schools for our own children."
Edwards said negotiations include a number of factors such as establishing how much the district will provide in terms of cleaning services.
"Part of the negotiations is calculating what the cost would be to rent out our facilities. We hope to wrap something up in the next couple of months to get a sense of where we are going in terms of rentals," Edwards said.
The district has nine elementary and four high schools that could be potential rental space in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton.
