By Stacy O’Brien
If you like your neighbourhood outdoor rink maybe you better volunteer to look after it, otherwise it might not be there much longer.
The rinks pose a difficult policy issue for the single city.
Who should look after outdoor ice rinks — volunteers or paid municipal staff? This question was raised when the 11 pre-existing municipalities were combined. Some felt it was the city’s responsibility. Others thought a volunteer program was the way to go. Various forms of these two approaches existed in the pre-amalgamation municipalities. Now the single-city policy is a compromise based on volunteerism, but with some municipal funding.
Some communities have scored big with Ottawa’s new outdoor-rink policy, but others feel like they’ve just been rammed headfirst into the boards. Under the new plan community volunteer groups run the outdoor rinks. The groups get money to maintain the ice. Some rinks receive money for supervision.
Before amalgamation, Gloucester and Vanier used taxes to fund outdoor rinks and paid city workers to look after them. Other rural municipalities like West Carleton, Osgoode and Rideau had community organizations looking after the outdoor rinks.
Rinks will now get between $1,100 and $4,700 in annual funding, depending on whether they are puddle, double-ice surface, or high-board.
Puddle rinks are the smallest and have no boards around them. Double-ice surfaces are two large rinks separated by a snow bank with one side for figure skating and the other for hockey. High-board rinks have wooden boards around them and receive the most funding.
Baseline Coun. Rick Chiarelli, a member of the health, recreation and social services committee, says the new policy “is not perfect at all. In four years there could be no funding for community rinks.
“One of the drawbacks of amalgamation is the cookie-cutter service it produces,” says Chiarelli. “We don’t have the same flexibility to have one program in one community and a different one in another.
“The most popular rinks won’t be affected, but I suspect there will be fewer rinks.” He says the new outdoor-rink policy forces community associations to “buckle down” and come up with a program.
But Ottawa program director Mark Magee disagrees. “The city won’t just begin closing down rinks.” He says a rink would never be closed without consulting with the community and the councillor for the area.
Paul Graham, chair of the volunteer-based Blackburn parks and recreation association, complains that if communities don’t have volunteers to look after the rink, there won’t be one at all. Graham says there wouldn’t be outdoor rinks in Blackburn, located in Gloucester, without a strong community.
“If I sound disappointed, I am,” says Graham of the new one-city plan.
At meetings to decide what to do about outdoor rinks, he says city staff seemed to have already made up their minds and were just going through the motions of community consultation.
He says in some communities no one is stepping forward to make and clear the ice, so those rinks may go.
But in other communities where volunteers are doing it all, the new policy is welcome. Osgoode resident Carol Nixon says it’s a nice change to have some money to maintain the rink.
Nixon was part of a group that raised $200,000 to build a park that serves as a summer playing field and a winter ice rink.
Coun. Alex Munter, chair of health, recreation, and social services says finding a compromise between different funding schemes wasn’t easy, and involved compromise.
“In the whole big picture, every community will be at the up-end and down-end of harmonization,” Munter says.
If rinks had the same funding as they did in Gloucester, the cost would have been $800,000 more, he says. “That is a Cadillac level we couldn’t afford.”