ATHABASCA – Athabasca County councillors are hoping lawyers will be able to shed some light on the municipalities options as they gear up for negotiations with the Town of Athabasca over the future funding for the Athabasca Regional Multiplex and the Nancy Appleby Theatre.
Following a Feb. 27 council meeting that saw councillors discuss the facility in both open and closed session, the county voted unanimously to seek legal advice regarding its responsibility outlined in the March 10, 2020 agreement.
“We’ve talked about this item a lot, at the ARMS board meetings and around that table, and the more I’ve sat down to think about the implications the town’s decision could have on us, I’ve really come to recognize the significant amount of county tax payers dollars that have been invested in the facility,” said Coun. Ashtin Anderson, who also serves as the board chair for the Athabasca Regional Multiplex Society (ARMS).
“For that reason, I think we have to take actions to ensure that the asset is going to be managed and maintained at a reasonable level. Part of that is going to having discussions about how to ensure that the town can’t just cut the funding for important maintenance which will then cause negative impacts to our ratepayers investment.”
The town’s decision to reduce its maintenance funding to $90,000 in 2025 — and a subsequent decision from the county to limit its own contribution to the same amount — disrupted the status quo, where both municipalities were splitting the operating and capital costs fifty-fifty.
In addition to the reduction in multiplex funding, Athabasca County also stipulated its contributions only go towards the rec centre, and not the theatre, believing that the previous council had bought out its obligation to the facility in the 2020 agreement.
At the time, the county had paid the town a one-time amount of just under $1 million, in return for the smaller municipality assuming ownership of the title for the Old Brick School, Nancy Appleby Theatre, and the Alice B. Donahue Library and Archives, which are all on one title and had been operated by the multiplex.
A subclause in the agreement states that the two municipalities will continue to share the costs to operate and maintain the theatre. The difference in interpretation lies in what counts as maintenance. County councillor Brian Hall has spoken about his view, which is that general maintenance is different from capital maintenance, and that the landlord should be wholly responsible for the latter.
“There’s essentially three corporate bodies that are involved here … we have to be careful about the landlords figuring out how they want to interact with each other, and not putting pressure on the operator,” said Hall during the Feb. 27 meeting.
“We’ve got to figure out, as a region, how we take care of the assets we have chosen to build. We’ve made decisions, and we have to be responsible for the choices we made and figure out how to look after them in a way that’s respectful to ratepayers.”
