By Jenna Brule
Roger Palfreyman has used the Jack Purcell outdoor hockey rink almost every night this winter, but the new proposed city budget could leave him all laced up with no place to play.
“I come here every day to play,” Palfreyman said. “What are the kids going to do if they don’t have a place to go?”
The City of Ottawa is proposing to cut the $495,000 outdoor rink grant program from its 2004 budget to help cover the $109 million budget shortfall. Funding for Ottawa’s 220 outdoor rinks, including Centretown’s Jack Purcell, McNabb and Plouffe rinks, would be left up to community groups if city council approves the cuts at the end of the month.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes, chair of the city’s health, recreation and social services committee, says expecting the community to take over the rinks is “ridiculous.”
“If we want to be a partner with our community groups, then we have to treat them with dignity and respect,” Holmes said. “I am not in support of cutting the rink program.”
Holmes says turning funding over to community organizations may mean the end of outdoor rinks in many locations.
In 1995, the city asked the Jack Purcell Recreation Association to take over operating the two rinks, located beside the community centre. The association refused and the city has not approached them — that is, until now.
Eleanor Sawyer, president of the Jack Purcell Recreation Association, says the association could not take on responsibility for the rinks even if it wanted to.
“We couldn’t muster those kinds of funds,” Sawyer said. “It’s a huge involvement, a huge investment of volunteer time.”
The majority of funding for the rink program goes towards the delivery, set-up and removal of boards to 109 outdoor hockey rinks.
All three of Centretown’s outdoor rinks currently have boards supplied by the city.
Holmes says the city has to at least provide the community with boards.
“It’s ridiculous to ask our residents, who don’t possibly have big trucks, to transport boards all over the city,” she said.
Matt McCutcheon, a former Centretown resident, agrees boards are a necessity. He takes his six-and eight-year-old boys to the Jack Purcell rink every Wednesday.
“It’s not just a hockey thing. It’s protecting the surroundings,” said McCutcheon, referring to the safety of younger kids playing on the smaller rink next to the hockey rink.
Without boards, “there’s no boundaries for pucks flying right off through the park,” Sawyer said of the potential hazards. “We would certainly raise that issue. It has ramifications for safety.”
Sawyer says that although her association doesn’t contribute any funding, it keeps a close eye on the rinks. She says if there are rinks without boards, she will be going straight to the city to file a complaint, as she did last year when the association was worried about the safety of kids in the community centre’s after school program.
Capital Coun. Clive Doucet said the only hope of saving programs like outdoor rinks is to stop the city’s zero tax-increase streak.
“Now the tide has turned and the city is faced with a drastic cut in services or a large jump in taxes,” Doucet argued in an alternative budget he handed out during public consultations in February. “That hurts.”
The city’s health, recreation and social services committee is still meeting to review the budget before it goes to council on March 24.