Prescott offers one-time deal to E/C

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PRESCOTT – Town council is dangling a cheque for up to $50,000 in front of the Edwardsburgh/Cardinal Township council in hopes of enticing it to support Prescott’s application for money to build a new arena.

E/C council has until midnight on Monday to accept the deal or Prescott will take the offer off the table, town council decided this week.

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When an identical offer from Augusta is added, it would mean E/C would receive up to $100,000 from its two neighbours to operate its two arenas this year and into the future.

The Monday midnight deadline is crucial for Prescott. The last day for submitting its application for arena funding is Tuesday, and the town wants support from E/C township to strengthen its bid for provincial cash.

At an emergency meeting this week, Prescott council voted to sweeten its offer for the cost-sharing of South Grenville arenas by accepting a compromise proposal presented by Augusta Township.

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Augusta’s proposal would see the municipalities share the operating cost of arenas split three ways with a $25,000-per-arena cap on contributions. Prescott’s proposal would have seen the municipalities share the costs based of their populations – a formula that would have favoured the town.

Augusta also offered to make its proposal retroactive to the start of 2019 in an attempt to make the deal more attractive to E/C.

Until a replacement for Prescott’s Leo Boivin arena is built, Edwardsburgh/Cardinal would be the big winner in the deal since it operates the only two municipal arenas in South Grenville – at Cardinal and Spencerville. Now, Augusta contributes only $15,000 to E/C’s arenas while Prescott contributes nothing.

The Prescott-Augusta cost-sharing proposal would see the municipalities share the operating costs of about $120,000 a year for the two arenas. Edwardsburgh/Cardinal, however, maintains that the three should share capital costs, too, including paying off E/C’s borrowing costs, which bring the township’s total to about $440,000 a year including operating costs.

At a council meeting two weeks ago, E/C council rejected Prescott’s operating-cost proposal and council members challenged the idea that South Grenville needs a third arena.

Prescott Mayor Brett Todd conceded that “we’ve been rebuffed, pretty strongly” by E/C council but he hoped that it might change its mind when presented with the Prescott-Augusta proposal.

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Coun. Lee McConnell was cool to offering the retroactive deal to Edwardsburgh/Cardinal.

“To me, we’re giving $50,000 away to people who don’t want to make an agreement with us,” McConnell said.

Although the town’s prevailing thinking is that the arena funding proposal would be stronger as a three-municipality deal, McConnell suggested that Prescott might fare better by making a joint application with Augusta alone.

Prescott and Augusta don’t have any arenas so their case might be stronger than by lumping in Edwardsburgh/Cardinal, which has two, he argued.

Coun. Gauri Shankar said that three municipalities are better than two, particularly in light of the provincial government’s emphasis on more co-operation among municipalities.

And the $50,000 that the town would pay E/C this year would be peanuts if it convinces the province to pay $8 million toward the cost of building a new arena, Shankar said.

Coun. Leanne Burton said a three-municipality arena deal makes sense because families in South Grenville ignore municipal boundaries when it comes to recreation.

“It’s not just about the application; it’s about the children in South Grenville,” she said.

Council decided to endorse Augusta’s sharing proposal and present it to E/C council with its Monday-midnight deadline. Matt Armstrong, chief administrative officer, said the deadline would give him time to revise the town’s application on Tuesday to include E/C’s support.

But once the offer expires, Todd said it will be more difficult to negotiate a cost-sharing agreement with Edwardsburgh/Cardinal.

The finance committee of E/C council meets Monday but discussion of the Prescott-Augusta offer was not on the official agenda as of late Friday afternoon.

wlowrie@postmedia.com