Murray Wood: For just pennies more per day, you can get city services
Murray Wood observes that when it comes to telling us they're going to be digging deeper into our pockets, governments h...
Residents of a south Regina neighbourhood are concerned they may left without their community arena – with no plan for the future – when the dust settles on the 2026 City of Regina budget.
The list of scenarios included in the budget documents contains one option involving the Optimist and Kinsmen arenas, which both opened in 1970.
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The report says closing selling, or leasing the two arenas would save $160,000 but reduce indoor ice service levels by 13 per cent.
The appearance of the Optimist Arena in the report is raising concern from the Albert Park Community Association. In a Facebook post, it’s asking its members to contact Mayor Chad Bachynski and Ward 2 Coun. George Tsiklis.
“It is right in the heart of our community and it is really important for us,” the association’s co-president Andrew Sinnett said in an interview, explaining there are free and paid programs based in the arena that are very popular.
Sinnett said community members are aware the arena may be near the end of its life span, but wants to know there’s a plan in place to replace it.
“There’s already such a shortage of ice time in Regina as is; if we were to lose this arena, I can pretty much guarantee we’re not going to get ice time somewhere else to offer our programming or our free skate program,” he explained, adding such a closure would be “devastating.”
“We don’t have a lot of recreational facilities here to begin with. We just have the Optimist and the South Leisure Centre beside it,” he said.
“We would be losing basically all of our winter programming.”
Sinnett suggests a phased closure of the two arenas, rather than both at once. He would also like to see the city take a middle path in which advance notice of the arena’s closure would allow time to create a plan to replace the facility rather than simply tear it down and redevelop the site.
“It’s not going to be perfect for everybody; not everybody’s going to get what they want,” he said.
Council will begin its budget deliberations December 15.
