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Golden's Rec Department seeking feedback on Fees Bylaw

The Town of Golden’s new Recreation Fees Bylaw has passed its first reading, and now it is time for the public to have their input.

The Town of Golden’s new Recreation Fees Bylaw has passed its first reading, and now it is time for the public to have their input.

“To keep things current and to address best practices of the time, underneath council’s direction we are drafting a new recreation fees bylaw,” said Jordan Petrovics, manager of recreation services.

“We’re encouraging the public to provide feedback on what their potential desires are on using our recreation facilities. We want to know what works, when they want to use our facilities, and what we can do to make it easier for them.”

The new bylaw addresses far more than just the cost structure of the Town’s recreation facilities. It covers rental processes, age categories for public programming, user group pricing, a platform for future sponsorship opportunities, time categories when different fees are charged, guidelines to collect user information from groups, damage deposits, payment process, and promotion of facilities and programs.

It will also revise cancellation policies, making it easier for Town staff to refill the facilities when an event is cancelled.

“Right now we’re working towards having a cost structure in place that allows decent means of cost recovery for specific requests that user groups have in terms of extra add ons that they want for their facility,” said Petrovics.

This means, for example, add on costs such as extra heat in the bleachers will be outlined in the bylaw.

Right now the recreation department’s main goal with this document is to make things as easy to understand as possible, and get as much feedback as possible.

“The proposed document will not be able to give the answers to every challenge around how we run our recreation facilities. That’s why we need public feedback. We need to know how our users feel about this document. What we’re doing is trying to lay a framework for future community success with our facilities,” said Petrovics.

“Nothing right now is set in stone, and in order to make a good document we have to have lots of input from the public, both good and bad.”

To gain that feedback, the department is hosting an open house on June 11 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in council chambers.

Petrovics will be on hand to go through the document, answer any questions, and listen to suggestions.

The bylaw is already available at www.golden.ca, and if anyone is unable to get to the open house, they can contact town hall and set up a private meeting with Petrovics.

All feedback will be documented, and presented to council. The goal is to have the bylaw in place in August, before the arena gets up and running for the season.

For more details on the public feedback process please check out the Town of Golden website by looking under the public notices (click on see all), e-mail jordan.petrovics@golden.ca or call 250-344-2271 Ext 225.