The city of Swift Current is making some pocket-change increases to some of their community service facilities rates moving forward.

Swift Current city council approved a motion at Monday night's council meeting to incrementally hike 11 different facility rates up for the next couple of years, beginning on September 1, 2021.

General Manager of community services for the city of Swift Current Jim Jones said not all rates are increased by the same percentage but the city strives for a 40 per cent recovery rate from the community services divison.

"Each rate for each facility is reviewed and some are recommended to increase while some remain the same," he said. "Upon reviewing the market and the facility practices there are some rates that are recommending holding constant, in hopes to drive more patrons to utilize the services to increase the revenue."

Two per cent increases for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons will be applied to: arena ice rates, athletic field per player rates, aquatic facility rates, and art gallery rates. One per cent increases for the same timeframe will be applied to: dry floor surface rate, Colonel Clifton Centre, Dickson Community Centre, community garden rentals, and extra revenue rentals. Aquatic programming will rise 1 per cent in the 2021-22 season and 2 per cent in 2022-23. And no increase to aquatic general admission for 2021-22 but a one per cent increase in 2022-23.

The 40 per cent recovery rate has been a direction to city administration from city council for as long as Tim Marcus, Swift Current's Chief Administrative Officer, can recall.

"A lot of community service facilities can't return that," he said. "We don't get 40 per cent from our parks, we don't get 40 per cent from the Colonel Clifton Centre, the pool could never recover 40 per cent without putting it at a price point where nobody would use it. So in the facilities that can recover more than 40 per cent, they do so and hopefully, we average somewhere around that 40 per cent when they're all put together at the end of the year."

The final numbers from the 2020 season aren't finalized yet but the city reports the recovery rate to be around 45 per cent, down slightly from the 46 per cent in 2019, and from 47 per cent in 2018. The top projected recovery rate for any community service facility in 2021 is Fairview Arenas at 66 per cent while the lowest is the Colonel Clifton Centre at 29 per cent (see chart below article).

A strong majority of council were in favour of having smaller increases to community service rates and emphasized they don't want to financially handcuff local programs that use the facilities, especially Mayor Al Bridal.

"The idea is some people can afford to pay more and some can't," he said. "If we look at our outdoor rinks for one, those things virtually just cost the taxpayer money, and yet they provided such an opportunity to all our children and especially children that don't have the opportunity to actually be in a hockey league. There's a lot of kids in our community that can't afford to play hockey but they can afford to play shinny.

"I know for myself 40 per cent is a good goal to strive for and if we're at 45-47 I think we are okay. If we start getting up at 55-60 (per cent) we may be recovering more money but we're going to be driving a lot of children out of these programs."

Whereas Swift Current City Councillor John Wall believes the city should be aiming for a higher recovery rate from its community services division.

"I'm looking at the rate increases and I don't have any problem with them, I think they could be a little higher," he said. "I'm a strong proponent of user-pay and I think we should have these higher. Maybe next year we could see them higher so we have more than 40-50 per cent (recovered).

Another thing a few councillors worried about inside the report was overlapping services with businesses in Swift Current.

"I think it's important that as a city we keep striving not just to be comparable with the businesses that are providing a service in our community but not to be in competition with them," Swift Current City Councillor Tom Christiansen said.

The items that drew criticism from councillors were tent and drape rentals along with renting out office space at Dickson Community Centre.