Keystone Centre’s capital plan in limbo as city awaits provincial funding confirmation

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This article was published 13/08/2016 (3325 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Province of Manitoba has yet to confirm if it will match the City of Brandon’s $500,000 funding commitment to the Keystone Centre this year.

As a result, the Keystone’s five-year capital plan is in a holding pattern, as the city’s funds are contingent on the province’s contribution.

“We haven’t heard anything specific. We get the general comments coming back that (the province) supports the facility and how important

we are for economic development,” said Keystone Centre general manager Neil Thomson. “We’re just trying to move forward on our capital plan.”

This issue will be brought up at Monday’s city council meeting, with the Keystone Centre’s board chair, Coun. Shawn Berry (Linden Lanes), bringing forward a motion to remove the matching funds condition for 2016.

When the city’s original funding commitment was made in January, Berry said council had hoped the former NDP government would commit to the funding prior to the election.

“But as it turned out, all the worst-case scenarios happened,” Berry said. “We didn’t get the commitment at that time from the sitting government, and of course now with the new government, they’re just trying to get their feet under them and we haven’t had an answer back from them.”

Berry points out the $500,000 is already in the city’s 2016 financial plan — with the majority coming out of the accommodation tax reserve, and the remaining $100,000 from the general budget.

Just for this year, Berry hopes council will be on board to delete the words: “conditional upon matching funds from the Province of Manitoba” from the capital plan.

“Even though it’s not everything that we need at the Keystone, at least it allows us to get something started and done,” Berry said. “Because every year we wait, things just get worse and worse and worse and the amounts for capital needs just grow and grow and grow.”

Last fall, city council voted in favour of supporting the Keystone’s five-year capital plan. For several years, the facility had been trying for a multi-year funding plan rather than one-off capital requests.

At 540,000 square feet, the Keystone is Brandon’s largest and most recognizable venue, bringing a wide array of events to the city. Thomson explained at the time that committed capital funding would help to put the aging facility on more stable footing and ensure the necessary maintenance can be planned for, well in advance.

Thomson’s original request was $2 million per year — $1 million from the province and $1 million from the city for the next five years. During budget deliberations last January, the city approved $500,000 for 2016.

“We had to eliminate a fair bit of stuff. What we were hoping to get done in the next five years, based on the funding we were promised now,” Berry said.

The plan had to be scaled back, and Thomson said it’s generally capital needs required for day-to-day operations rather than big-ticket items.

“The purpose of us doing it in this manner was trying to establish a regular capital funding program,” Thomson said. “So certainly our expectation is the province will still come to the table and because of the change in government, they felt they need a bit more time.”

A request was made to the Province of Manitoba on Friday by The Brandon Sun to get a status update on the file. A government spokesperson responded with a statement via email:

“Good governments make the difficult decisions. The NDP never made a difficult decision while in provincial government and spent beyond their means. In an effort to return the province to a responsible fiscal track, all capital projects are under review to ensure Manitobans are receiving the best value for their tax dollars.”

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