Banff Hockey Academy was in front of Banff town council this week to make a number of requests regarding its lease with the municipality, debt repayment plan and ice rates.
However, Banff taxpayers won’t have the ability to know how these submissions affect them as council heard the delegation behind closed doors.
President of BHA Billy Doherty requested the meeting be held in-camera, and administration used section 16 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to protect third party business information from disclosure.
The result of the more than an hour-long discussion was a motion by council to direct administration to work with the hockey academy to bring back more information to council and for administration to respond to the requests made.
While Mayor Karen Sorensen said all of council wants more information, Councillor Stavros Karlos voted against the motion.
“I was not provided with enough information to determine the benefits to Banff taxpayers on this,” he said.
A letter from Doherty to council included in the agenda package detailed in general what the academy is looking for.
“We will request to have the pressure of the current debt with the Town of Banff be placed on a repayment schedule that will allow for a more patient approach to debt reduction and reflective of the BHA cash flow,” wrote Doherty. “We will request that the summer week fee for Aug. 11-17, 2014 be removed or at least minimized to help us with our cash flow.”
Furthermore, Doherty requested reinstatement of a long-term lease and a reduced rate for non-prime ice time being used by the hockey academy for the upcoming years “and especially that ice used by our girls’ program as we try to build this program.”
The Outlook was unable to speak with Doherty directly before deadline.
The Outlook also requested the amount of debt BHA owes the municipality for deferred ice payments and payment schedule, however, the Town’s manager of communications Diana Waltmann said those details could not be publicly released under section 16 of FOIPP “because it is part of a contract with a third party.”
“The company had specifically said for us to go in-camera and we cannot go out of camera without council approval,” Waltmann said. “At this point they are still in negotiations … and at the point when council makes a decision it will become public.”
A special meeting is being scheduled for council next week to hear back from administration on the requests made.
As for how much BHA pays for ice time, its rate is $126 an hour for regular ice, $134 per hour for tournament ice and in summer it pays a flat rate of $7,500 a week.
