Town council at its recent meeting with Deputy Mayor Doug Laing, centre, chairing. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Parks and Rec. update

Town looks at recreation facilities’ usage in 2022

Apr 24, 2023 | 5:08 PM

Looking back on 2022, the Town of Battleford saw an increase in some of its recreation facilities’ usage to pre-pandemic levels in some areas.

Parks and Recreation Manager Jordan Schechtel said each year administration takes a look at the previous year to see how usage numbers faired for the Battleford Arena, the Alex Dillabough Centre (the ADC), the Battleford flats, and the campground.

“Overall, the arena utilization was up in all three categories in 2022,” he said. “The non-prime time utilization rate was the highest it’s been since we started doing the tracking this way in 2015, which is good of course for revenue. But it does also make it harder for the guys to get out and do snow removal and flooding the outdoor rinks. So, overall the arena for the 2022 year is quite good. Prime time utilization was up about two per cent from last year, non-prime time up about eight per cent, and overall [usage] was up about six per cent from last year.”

At the Alex Dillabough Centre, administration looked at the hall use during weekdays, weekends, and weekday usage for the three meeting rooms.

“The weekend [hall] utilization rates, those are basically a return to pre-pandemic levels,” Schechtel said. “So, that’s mostly your weddings and your big larger functions. That’s also where you get a large chunk of your revenue.”

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He said the weekday utilization rates improved from what they were in 2021, but are still lower than they were pre-pandemic.

For the Battleford flats, Schechtel noted administration changed how it tracked usage a bit.

“We started tracking how much time is actually used versus how much time is booked,” he said.

For slow pitch, diamonds #5, #6, and #7 were used well at the flats in 2022. Schechtel said though that usage has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, largely because there are fewer teams than there used to be before the pandemic.

Diamond #8 was not used at all in 2021 or 2022. But, he said, administration is going to “try to push the minor organizations to use that diamond because it now has shale [surface] and irrigation.”

The campground continues to do well.

“Overall, 2022 was a very busy year for the campground,” Schechtel said. “We have revenue of $120,000, or just over $120,000, which is the second most the campground has ever generated.”

New software has been added to make different types of bookings easier, and as a result, is expected to help bring in even more revenue.

“There is obviously a direct correlation between how much the facility gets used and how much it has to be subsidized through taxpayer funding,” Schechtel said of the town’s recreation facilities. “The general rule of thumb that we try to go by is that we want 50 per cent funded through taxation, 50 per cent funded through the users. Some facilities were meeting that, some aren’t.”

For 2022, the arena was at 53 per cent [funded through users], the ADC at 38 per cent, the flats at 26 per cent, and the campground was “doing very well” at 95 per cent.

“Overall, all those were above the three-year average, with the exception of the flats,” Schechtel said. “But we also have to take into consideration that 2020 and 2021 were largely affected by the pandemic, and those numbers are a bit off from what they traditionally would be.”

Coun. David George encouraged more people to use the meeting rooms at the ADC as an option.

“Those meeting rooms in the Alex Dillabough Centre are absolutely wonderful for smaller meetings,” he said. “It’s 20 people for one of the rooms, and a little bit less for a couple of the others. But they are awesome. I think the price is very reasonable. So, people looking to have 10 or 15 people in a meeting should look at those facilities.”

Deputy Mayor Doug Laing, who chaired council’s meeting, said the facilities’ usage report would be helpful when the town is preparing and looking at numbers at budget time down the road.

“It’s also a real nice indicator that we’re climbing back to some pre-pandemic numbers,” he added. “People are getting back out, and they are back using the facilities. They are back to weddings, and all sorts of things.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow