Halifax Regional Council will soon consider a motion to write off $295,032.74 in outstanding fees from the Sackville Sports Stadium
The decision came after a meeting by the city’s Audit and Finance Committee on Wednesday that saw the committee vote to bring a report to council sometime in the future.
But one councillor says that when the report comes to council, he won’t be voting yes on the motion.
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Matt Whitman, councillor for Hammonds Plains-St. Margarets, says the amount of money is staggering.
“I won’t be able to support that all. It sends the wrong message especially to those who did pay their membership,” Whitman told Global News.
According to staff, the $295,032.74 is only 1.8 per cent of the total revenue of the Sackville Sports Stadium in over nearly 15 years.
If successful, this will be the first formal write-off for the stadium since it was created.
City staff says the reason the figure was allowed to grow larger was due to poor management at the stadium and poor accounting practices.
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According to Jerry Blackwood, the acting Chief Financial officer, the bulk of the money was due to a now-cancelled policy that allowed the Sackville Sports Stadium to charge people for a full year’s membership even if they attempted to cancel their membership after three months.
Memberships would also be auto-renewed by Sackville.
“It’s not very businesslike or sensible in any sense. It’s hard to justify that we’d be doing this,” Mayor Mike Savage said during the committee.
“It’s about time we wrestle this one down and dealt with it.”
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The staff report says that some citizens were even forced to change financial providers so that the stadium would no longer attempt to process the fee.
The policy remained in place until Nov. 16, 2016.
According to the municipality’s charter, the council is only able to write off accounts after all efforts have been exhausted in collection.
While the municipality does have a collection agency it uses staff says it’s unfeasible to collect the fees as they span such a large amount of time.
Whitman says that is unacceptable.
“Any private business would try hard to recover these dollars,” said Whitman. “I don’t think we tried very hard to recover the accounts.”
A report, titled ‘Write-off of Uncollectible Accounts – Sackville Sports Stadium – Details’, has a more detailed breakdown of the figures — but the general public won’t get to see it.
The report is considered confidential and the Audit and Finance Standing Committee decided to follow staff’s recommendation that the report be passed on to regional council in an in-camera report.
The Audit and Finance committee is made up of: Bill Karsten, councillor for Dartmouth South-Eastern Passage; Lorelei Nicoll, councillor for Cole Harbour-Westphal; Russell Walker, councillor for Halifax-Beford Basin; Stephen Adams, councillor for Spryfield-Sambro Loop-Prospect Road; Steve Craig councillor for Lower Sackville; and Whitman.
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