City of Powell River council will consider establishment of a reserve for the sports hall of fame.
At the October 28 finance committee meeting, director of parks, recreation and culture Tara O’Donnell provided a report to city councillors to establish the reserve and allocate $42,000 from the city’s innovation fund reserve to the sports hall of fame reserve.
“This essentially is no new money,” said O’Donnell. “It’s simply putting it into a reserve that is earmarked and can be accessed for operations related to the sports hall of fame.”
Finance committee chair councillor George Doubt said the committee had two recommendations to consider. The first was to establish the reserve, and the second was to allocate the $42,000 to the newly created sports hall of fame reserve.
Councillor Maggie Hathaway said this money has been in reserve for a number of years and didn’t get used, so it’s now recommended that it go into a different allocation.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said councillor Jim Palm had mentioned in a previous finance committee meeting that there is fundraising that happens related to the sports hall of fame inductions and people who are contributing to the sports hall of fame want some assurance that those funds are held separately to make sure they go to that activity as opposed to some other activity.
Palm said this was a very good observation.
“The number one driver around this from the committee level is when we reach out to our various sponsors of the event, we want to assure those sponsors that their contributions are going into a sports hall of fame reserve and not into general revenue or an innovative account of another name without any control over those funds,” said Palm. “They want to be assured they are contributing to that event.”
Finance committee chair George Doubt said there is no requirement of the city to make annual contributions to the reserve in the future.
“That would be something for future decisions of council to make,” said Doubt.
O’Donnell, in a report to the committee, stated that the sports hall of fame reserve will ensure funding for this program is related to the inductee program. She stated that most expenditures will take place in the year leading up to inductee banquets, planned for approximately every three years, although there may be occasional operational expenses relating to the maintenance of the display wall in Powell River Recreation Complex.
She stated that grant funds and community contributions to the sports hall of fame program will be placed into the reserve and are intended to offset expenditure of city funds.
The finance committee gave unanimous consent to send the two recommendations to city council for approval.
