Tunnel vision

PEFAC at a crossroads, again

Where are we headed with this?” asked Keith MacDonald, Hallowell councillor in 2007. Two years earlier, the Lester family had been preparing to sell the RecPlex (later renamed the Prince Edward Fitness and Aquatic Centre or PEFAC) when Shire Hall intervened to backstop a volunteer group that was eager to operate the facility—as the Lester family had done for 18 years previously.

Proponents of the volunteer group boasted at the time that their fundraising was going so well that PEFAC would be selfsufficient by year two—they wouldn’t need municipal support. Indeed, PEFAC would become a model of efficiency that other municipal recreation facilities would soon emulate.

Nearly 20 years later, PEFAC remains reliant upon municipal support to pay its rent. It loses money every year and is facing another crisis.

“What’s at the end of the tunnel?” asked MacDonald in 2007. He did not live to find out. The council member and member of the provincial parliament passed away in 2021.

The end of the tunnel, however, looks remarkably similar to its entrance—long, dark and leading, seemingly, back to where it all began.

The Lester family is again looking to sell the building. The price tag has risen from $1.9 million in 2005 to $4.6 million today.

PEFAC wants to buy the property. But it doesn’t have any money. So PEFAC was back at Shire Hall last week, asking it to throw them some lifelines. First, it wants the municipality to designate PEFAC’s fundraising campaign as a “project of community interest”, thereby enabling donors to receive a tax receipt for their gift.

PEFAC is also staring at a big rent increase in February. It wants Council to top up its annual municipal support payment to cover the increase.

Council was wary. Its own finances are already precarious. It has big capital expenditures planned and an excess of buildings it can’t maintain already. It’s made commitments to fix big things, yet it doesn’t have the money to do so. Another sticking point is that the property is privately owned, yet operates as a quasi-public facility.

Councillor Engelsdorfer wanted to know more about the February rent increase. PEFAC’s Sue Matthieu said the volunteer board has been thrust into the crisis in the past few weeks and is proceeding one step at a time.

“We don’t know what the increase will be, nor why now,” acknowledged the PEFAC director.

Councillor Roy Pennell had several concerns. He noted that private businesses provide fitness services in Prince Edward County. He doesn’t like the idea of using municipal dollars to support a competing service.

PEFAC director Sue Mathieu said that while others provide fitness services, they are all small and expensive. Matthieu noted, too, that fitness memberships help to support maintenance of the pool.

Pennell also wanted to know how many PEFAC members lived in Ameliasburgh, repeating a concern that had been made often 20 years ago when this facility was at an earlier crossroads.

“I think we are drawing from all parts of the County, but it is very difficult to put numbers to it,” explained PEFAC Director Sue Mathieu.

Picton councillor Kate MacNaughton suggested that while PEFAC may not serve swaths of County residents in the north and west, if they use facilities in Quinte West and Belleville, “we must recognize that they receive municipal funds too.”

But Councillor MacNaughton’s overall message to the group, while supportive, was restrained. The Picton councillor was agreeable to extending PEFAC the beneficial fundraising status it requested, but she was not ready to make a commitment beyond that. She cautioned that the municipality was staring a tough budget in December and that PEFAC should plan to fund its campaign on its own.

Ameliasburgh representative Roy Pennell also wanted assurances that PEFAC fundraising, if supported by Shire Hall, had to be de-linked from the property. He did not want Council to make a commitment to the existing PEFAC facility or property.

Others warned that extending “project of community interest” tax protection to PEFAC might open a floodgate of requests.

“Where does it stop?” asked Councillor Chris Braney.

Councillor David Harrison wanted to follow the money.

“Where does it go?” asked the North Marysburgh councillor about the money raised under the aegis of the municipality.

His question prompted Chief Administrative Officer Adam Goheen to interject.

“We wouldn’t move forward unless we knew exactly what the money was being used fdor before we entered into an agreement to collect and eventually disburse it,” assured CAO Goheen.

By this point in the discussion, there were many more questions than answers. As such, the file was thrust onto the desks of municipal staff and PEFAC to provide further clarity.

Council is still looking for a light at the end of this tunnel.