WINNIPEG –
Ahead of the winter season, the City of Winnipeg wants to know: Will neighbourhood groups or community centres oversee and maintain retention ponds as skating rinks?
The answer, according to a new administrative report, is a resounding no.
“It takes us all day, sometimes two days to clear our rinks here, then all of a sudden I have to worry about a retention pond?” said David Desousa, operations manager for the Tyndall Park Community Centre, one of the community centres included in the report.
“It’s just not viable,” he said.
As part of the report, 18 unnamed neighbourhood organizations and three community centres were asked by City officials if they would support the use of a retention pond as a skating rink.
All reported back in the negative.
For community centres, the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are a large part of the reason.
“We weren’t able to open our community centre in the winter time for the kids to come in and hang out and spend money in the canteen,” said Desousa, “We’re struggling.”
The two other community centres included in the report, Gateway Recreation Centre and Southdale Community Centre, are in a similar financial situation.
“Normally, in a non-COVID year, we barely break even,” said Denis Van Laeken, general manager with the Gateway Recreation Centre, adding that hiring new staff to oversee a retention pond skating rink wouldn’t be feasible right now.
Van Laeken said the centre has already added extra staffing for increased sanitization and checking immunization records.
“The cost is probably close to $75,000 to $100,000 of extra costs that we have and getting much less revenue,” said Van Laeken
Todd Thornton, president of the Southdale Community Centre, said city officials didn’t provide a lot of details on what would be required to manage a pond skating rink, making it difficult to support the endeavour.
“I think it’s a great idea but we would just need a little bit more help financially to make it work,” said Thornton.
“We would just need some sort of cost-sharing or some sort of help and maybe a little bit more clarification on what our responsibilities would be,” he said.
It’s entirely possible the City of Winnipeg could oversee retention ponds as skating rinks without the help of community centres or organizations.
To have City staff test ice for thickness and maintain five ice rinks would cost about $81,719, according to the report.
Brian Mayes, chair of the City’s water and waste committee, said that cost isn’t unmanageable.
“Who wouldn’t want to see more use of the retention ponds?” said Mayes, “On the other hand, how many of these would we monitor and can we do it safely?”
“You can’t check the levels of every single pond every day. ‘Use at your own risk’ for a twelve-year-old? I’m not crazy about that,” he said.
Councillor Janice Lukes, a member of the water and waste committee who has been advocating for more public winter recreational spaces, does not entirely agree.
“I would like to see the ponds with signage that says, ‘skate at your own risk,” said Lukes, “relinquish the City from liability.”
Lukes added that the City should also invest in more public skating rinks on solid ground.
“We only have two skating rinks that aren’t regulation hockey rinks in Winnipeg,” she said, “So, skate at your own risk on the ponds and I’m going to be looking for more funding to secure additional land rinks.”
The Standing Policy Committee on Water and Waste, Riverbank Management and the Environment will discuss the findings of the report and possible paths forward during their meeting on Friday.
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