LAURIE WEIR
CHANTRY — Rideau Lakes Township wants hard numbers from its arena partners before it heads into budget deliberations for 2026.
Council voted Aug. 5 during the regular meeting of council to request user data from the Town of Smiths Falls, the Village of Westport and the Township of Athens, the three municipalities with which it holds recreation agreements. The motion asks for the number of Rideau Lakes residents registered in 2024 programs that used the respective arenas. The deadline to receive this data is Sept. 30.
The motion was brought forward by Coun. Sue Dunfield and passed unanimously.
For years, Rideau Lakes has paid to subsidize arena access for its residents under a shared-services model that allows local users to register at the same rates as residents of Smiths Falls, Westport or Athens. The challenge, councillors say, is they have no way of knowing how many residents actually use those services.
Coun. Jeff Banks said he’s been asking for these numbers for years.
“We pay them $130,000 to $150,000 a year for Smiths Falls alone and that’s a big cheque to not be able to see those numbers,” he said. “I think we’ll be surprised at how low those numbers actually are.”
Rideau Lakes CAO Shellee Fournier said the town does not currently collect residency data at the door. Most arena usage is tracked through user groups like minor hockey or figure skating, which register participants directly. Fournier said those groups would need to be contacted and asked to share registration information sorted by municipality.
Coun. Dustin Bulloch questioned the reliability of municipal data and suggested the township consider a resident survey of its own to determine where people are actually going for recreation, indicated that users may be registered for hockey in Smiths Falls, but may be slated for practises in Westport or Athens.
Mayor Arie Hoogenboom said the agreement with Smiths Falls is formula-based, not user-based. It was designed years ago by the township’s auditor and has not been updated in at least eight years. The formula factors in MPAC property assessment, distance to the closest arena, and ability to pay.
Rideau Lakes currently pays about 26 per cent of Smiths Falls’ net operational arena costs under that agreement. It does not contribute to capital expenses.
“We’ve made no commitment to any capital project, existing or future,” the mayor said. “Smiths Falls may eventually come to us with a request, but that hasn’t happened.”
Hoogenboom said he believes the request for hard user numbers will be difficult to fulfill and cautioned that informal or untracked use such as walking tracks or public skating is nearly impossible to quantify.
Still, he agreed it’s time to revisit the structure. The current agreement with Smiths Falls expires in 2026.
A request for information to the Smiths Falls recreation director has not yet been returned. More to come.
