On Jan. 19, the Lethbridge and District Exhibition signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Lethbridge contingent on several conditions.
During the first Lethbridge city council meeting of 2024, members of council voted 7-2 in favour of entering the MOU.
Subject to the government of Alberta approving the document, Lethbridge city council and Lethbridge County staff will replace the current LDE board of directors and will work toward creating a strong and viable business model moving forward.
The now-approved MOU will also subject previous LDE operations to a third-party review and will require redemption of shares from current shareholders to the City of Lethbridge.
Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen said the move was a difficult decision.
“I don’t want to sound like a broken record — we did not want to be in the situation that we are in,” Hyggen said after the meeting. “This was not due to council, it was an outside agency that fell upon some hard times. So there’s no easy decision. If we support the MOU or we don’t support the MOU. It’s a decision that I thought was important at this time.
“Come the fall, in November when we get this review that comes back and it shows that this is not going to be more sustainable than it is today, we have that opportunity to say no at that time and to not move forward.”
In November 2023 the Lethbridge and District Exhibition came to city council with a nearly $7 million ask to cover unfunded capital and building-specific operating requirements for the newly built Agri-food Hub and Trade Centre, and asked it to take over the existing pavilions on site.
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Council then put the ask back onto the province, stating it could foot a portion of the loan if the government of Alberta agreed to fund the second half before Dec. 11.
The province then rejected the request, indicating it didn’t believe the business plan was viable, which terminated the initial ask.
LDE then approached council again with a letter of intent requesting operational, governance and financial support.
City council then directed administration to construct the MOU for consideration for the Tuesday council meeting.
A presentation from city staff indicated that if the City of Lethbridge were to approve the MOU, the actual costs to take over the building would be nearly $5 million in 2024, something that would come from reserves.
If it were to decline the MOU, not only would the exhibition likely dissolve within the year, but the city would still have to spend $5.4 million for the $3.4-million operating grant and the capital project deficit of $2 million.
Lethbridge city manager Lloyd Brierley says significant work went into building the presentation.
“The team is absolutely incredible. I couldn’t be more proud of them and the work that they’ve done and accomplished in a very short time amount of time to bring us to today,” Brierley said.
“And as you would have heard, really identifying where we were as far as the decision in 2020 and where we are today and the differences that we highlighted.”
Initially, the LDE 2020 operating budget indicated there would be a surplus of $2.3 million in the 2023-24 forecast. However, a revised 2024 operating budget analysis from the city projects shortfalls of $6.5 million.
The presentation also revealed that the building is unsuitable to hold livestock, limiting some of the agricultural uses it was expected to initially support.
Despite the economic shortfalls of the presentation, council voted to move forward by accepting the MOU.
Council says it will re-evaluate once the third-party review is conducted in November, at which time it will decide if it will continue to support the exhibition.
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