The president of a local community centre says she feels the city has lied to her.
Barb Kukko has been volunteering at the North End Recreation Centre for more than 33 years and has often asked the city for more resources for the centre’s outdoor skating rinks.
“The excuse always was ‘well we don’t have the money; we don’t have the manpower,’” Kukko said.
But when she took a recent trip to the new outdoor rink at Prince Arthur’s Landing, Kukko said she was shocked at what she saw.
North End’s rinks are only staffed by one person five days a week as opposed to the seven-day-a-week operation at the marina. Kukko said she and other volunteers have to pick up the slack the other two days, opening shacks, turning on lights and supervising visitors to the ice.
“When I saw the Marina open like that with no problems and paid city personnel, not volunteers like myself, I was just sick to my stomach because I felt like I’d been lied to and treated very badly as a dedicated volunteer to this community,” she said.
Kukko added that all of the city’s facilities should be treated the same.
She has started a petition for the city to staff all outdoor rinks seven days a week.
Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds said Kukko’s complaints are part of a bigger issue about city services in recreation and quality of life areas.
“I don’t blame them wanting to have more service there are a tremendous amount of families who use that facility kids adults, there’s hockey and certainly the recreation centre is very, very active but I think we have to call a spade a spade.
“A number of years ago council decided to reduce services we use to have seven-day-a-week service at our outdoor rinks and sometime ago council decided to reduce that service,” he said.
“It really speaks volumes to how important these services are.”
He said there will most likely be a lot of debate about city services during the upcoming budget process.
“Frankly I would like the debate.”
Foulds pointed out that the city has put up new boarded rinks at Minnesota and Kuznier Parks this year. And he’s happy to see people using the new rink at Prince Arthur’s Landing.
“It’s really great that we’re getting more people active and using that facility.”
