The city will retire two debentures in 2011, plans to pay off two more loans in 2012 and one in 2013, leaving Servus Credit Union Place and Ray Gibbon Drive its only outstanding debts.
According to Gene Peskens, the acting chief financial officer for the city, 2011 saw the closure of loans for the RCMP building on Bellerose Drive, as well as a smaller loan for an energy savings program, which will free up approximately $716,000.
Next year the city plans to also pay off the loan used to build Mark Messier and Troy Murray arenas in the early 1990s, as well as one more small energy savings loan, freeing up another $586,000. One more debt — the public works building in Campbell — will be retired in 2013.
“If the public works building is paid off in 2013, the only debentures left are Servus Place and Ray Gibbon Drive,” Peskens said.
While Servus Place will remain on the books until 2025, local residents are already paying less than half what they originally were to cover the debt costs of the recreational facility. When council agreed to go ahead with construction, it levied a specific dollar amount against property taxes.
In 2005 the levy was calculated at $74 per $100,000 of assessment. That levy has since dropped by more than 50 per cent to approximately $35 per $100,000 in 2011.
“I don’t want to diminish the $35 but it isn’t hurtful to our pocketbooks,” Mayor Nolan Crouse said. “As we continue to move on, it gets less and less. Especially when you look at some of the numbers getting tossed around for new rec centres.”
Crouse noted some of those numbers are in the $100-million range. Servus Place was built for a guaranteed maximum price of $42.7 million.
That levy does not include the additional amount residents are taxed to help service the facility’s operating deficit. Though it varies from year to year depending on the size of the deficit, 2011 saw approximately $12 per $100,000 in assessment levied against homeowners.
Crouse conceded the amount will change depending on Servus Place’s forecasted annual operating deficit, which has dropped from a high of $2.3 million in its first year to approximately $600,000 in 2011. He says the facility has come a long way since then in trying to minimize that deficit even further.
“I think Starbucks was an intention to continue that (deficit reduction) and we just have to continue to market it,” Crouse said.
Servus Place is forecasting an operating deficit of $837,000 in 2012, which will climb to $1.2 million in 2012 and 2013.
