Elliot Lake Junior Wildcats Treasurer Len Kutchaw will lead a delegation of team board members to City Council Monday night, in a pitch for an immediate $20,000 cash infusion just to keep the Wildcats going for the rest of the season.
Along with that, Kutchaw will ask for forgiveness of ice fees this season or at least getting the fees written off by city hall, as sponsorships.
In his written presentation he said this investment would balloon to an effective boost for the local economy by $419,760. Kutchaw based this evaluation on the team's average annual budget of $324,796 over the past four years.
His benchmark was also based on a study that Scotiabank published on local economic impacts for municipalities with "community teams."
"This board would welcome a member of council to sit on the board. We will be dissecting every aspect of the team to find solutions to getting our finances and team play to an acceptable level," Kutchaw said.
Speaking of the current season he added, "Uncertainty around the future of the arena (Centennial Arena) reopening hurt the team in player recruitment, early season ticket sales, hockey camp revenues and sponsorships."
"The late opening of the arena added to our travel costs and negatively affected our gate receipts," he said.
Kutchaw went on, "We are down approximately $30,000 in sponsorships with no reasonable expectation at this point in the year, that we are going to significantly improve on this situation."
Kutchaw added that this season's player registrations are down by 3 players ($18,000). He explained that the financial results of the past two seasons (2018 and 2019) seemed close to "break-even" although there were three players who didn't pay their fees last year.
"Some of the current year's sponsorships were used to cover old debts. This means they show as revenue in the current year, but the cash associated with them was spent in the previous year (2018) to cover costs," Kutchaw said.
"This also does not include any debt repayment to the city, ELNOS or the Director (Wildcats) who is owed money," he said, addressing the elephant in the room.
"Our financial requirement from the city is not unreasonable. The city funds many organizations that contribute to community wellness," he said. "The team expects to be in a positive position in 3 to 5 years, with an adequate safety.cushion to allow for payments to be made against the city debt."
Last May, Elliot Lake city council made its final call, after weeks of speculation on the future of the city's 60-year-old Centennial Arena. Council voted five-to-one in favour of repairing the structure on Spruce Avenue, on the promise of structural engineer Alvin Olar of Tulloch Engineering that it would extend the life of the building for up to five years. The lone dissenter was Councillor Chris Patrie.
This cost would be more than $600,000, and involve repairs, engineering study costs and a sprayed-on membrane on the roof to reduce water leaks. The membrane added $100,000 to the original repair price, something most councillors saw as insurance in light of the city's poor record with building failures.
After once declaring the old building derelict, when they were stuck with very few options last April, council took a second look in the spring at ways to maintain indoor ice at Centennial, while the City of Elliot Lake continued to plan to build Centennial's eventual replacement in the Community Hub.
The cost for a new prefab structure at the Spruce Avenue site would have been far higher than the cost of a fix-up, according to Elliot Lake CAO Daniel Gagnon.
"We were hoping it would be in the $2-M to $3-M range and we might be able to eke out some grants for that," Gagnon said
"But the cost to do a proper process involving the existing pad and a new roof," he went on, "would be closer to $5-M."
Ultimately, council opted to repair/replace some of the arena's old wooden roof truss structure and support posts, then to apply the waterproof membrane.
Gagnon said to replace the existing building with a pre-manufactured structure would cost $5.3-million but there would be no money left for the interior, the rink, the canteen or change rooms. It would have also meant losing the first half of this year's ice season.
Now it's up to city council to take another look and hopefully make some financial arrangement for the Wildcats after councillors hear from the club's delegation on Monday night.