Bad news for Totino-Grace & Tri-City

[goldy313]

I've sat through way to many budget meetings in my time but a few thoughts.<br><br>Baseball, soccer and football fields are, in general, very, very cheap to maintain. A mowing every week, dragging the infield by some college kid a couple times a week, volunteers to do the lining. Also the liabilty is minimal if there is any. The other thing is anyone in the community can use it at almost any time for free. Some of us older people can remember when pick up baseball games were common from the return of the robins up until the leaves fell. Now most ball fields sit empty unless there are little league games going on. Soccer has replaced baseball as the pick up game of choice in many places. Still the community can see if and when they're used making justifying their need all the easier.<br><br>Swimming pools, indoor hockey rinks, and golf courses are different, they are very,very costly to maintain. Liability is through the roof, and therefore you need trained and usually higher wage people to run them. In those places you have to have user fees to support the cost or they'd sink a city's budget in a heartbeat. You can probably treat an ice rink like a ball field in many places, but once you get to multiple sheets the tax base just won't allow it. You have to remember that ice can be used outside for much of the season. So to try and make multiple sheets of indoor ice a public necisity is a tough task. It's a luxury and most people see it as such. Hockey's reliance on indoor ice was a Pandora's box, you just can't go back. We've done ourselves in, in that regard. Hockey people see a difference between indoor ice in January and an outdoor rink, most of the world doesn't. Add to that most see hockey as a sport for the affluent and you can see how much good that has done Carl Pohlad and Red McCombs in getting anything done.<br><br>Invariably hockey rinks are a catch-22 in most of the state. To come even close to breaking even they need to charge an ever increasing amount for ice. That is passed on to its users who in turn have to charge higher registration fees which prices people out of hockey, lowering the demand for ice. To justify the need of rinks the youth hockey association (usually far and away the biggest user of ice) increases the hours it uses, thereby increasing it's cost and having to pass it along to parents yet again, and still more kids drop out. Then the cycle starts all over again. You can see it in many places, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester, Burnsville, and Richfield to name a few. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p074.ezboard.com/bmnhs.showUserP ... oldy313</A> at: 9/20/05 8:48 pm<br></i>

[packerboy]

goldy, I am no finance expert but I do know this:<br><br>1. Ice rinks are operated at minimal cost to the taxpayer because of user fees.<br><br>2. An well run ice rink will cost the taxpayers nothing after the debt service (cost of construction)because of the user fees.<br> <br><br>3. Other facilities provided by communities are much more costly to the taxpayer. <br><br>Swimming pools lose way more than ice rinks and they are in use about 2.5 months. <br><br>I havent looked at these numbers for a while but the last time I did, I saw that the rink in our community was budgeted for an $8,000 "loss". <br><br>The rest of the park and rec budget was $500,000...with little or no revenue.<br><br>Why does my son have to pay $10 every time he steps on the ice and others pay nothing when they use the walking paths, baseball parks, soccer fields etc. etc.<br><br>Why not charge people more so that the swimming pool doesnt lose 5 times what an ice rink does? <br><br>The attitude is " If they want their fancy indoor rinks, let them pay for it". <br><br>Fine, go find a empty lot to play baseball in.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>