Council to tackle funding for sports infrastructure in January

It was music to their ears.

During discussions about adding an estimated $2.1 million expenditure to its 2019 budget deliberations for improvements to the McCulley-Robertson ball diamonds, councillors learned that the municipality has about $1.6 million in two parkland reserve funds.

Town Treasurer Julia McKenzie told councillors at their November 26 meeting that the municipality has approximately $711,000 in a parks facility capital replacement reserve, and about another $913,000 in a parkland reserve fund— money which could be used for improvements to the McCulley-Robertson Recreation Park.

“In light of the fact that we have a large chunk of money in the other parks reserve as well, we may well be able to do a larger piece of this project than we thought we could a few minutes ago,” said Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano. “I just think that we need to get it right and I think that if we do it in January, we still have lots of time.”

“I think that’s a responsible course of action as well,” responded Mayor Scott Aitchison.

Councillor Brian Thompson noted that council would also have to consider the needs of the Huntsville Curling Club. The club is hoping to partner with the municipality to build a new facility.

“Now that we just found 1.6 million dollars, maybe it puts a different light on things going forward, so I would agree. I think that we should be looking at the whole sports requests on sort of a macro level for the next four years as opposed to one-off situation on each one of these,” said Thompson, referring to the various needs and requests of the various sports representatives in the community.

In the end, council unanimously agreed to bring the discussion back to the table in January.

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