Responses

My response

Hi Andy,

Before the answers, a thank you to you and the Sports Council. You’ve been a regular presence at our Recreation Commission meetings, and that kind of steady attendance and advocacy makes a difference. Commissioners hear directly from the people using the facilities, and user groups get their concerns on the record before decisions are made rather than after. Please pass my thanks along to your members.

Since these answers are going out to the LSOs, a bit of context for them: I chair Nelson and District Recreation Commission No. 5, which oversees the Nelson and District Community Complex and the wider Recreation Campus. I also chair the Nelson, Salmo, Areas E, F and G Regional Parks Commission. I post full reports from both at https://keithpage.ca/issues-and-reports

1) What will you do to enhance and build stronger sport and recreation opportunities for youth and adults?

Keep doing what’s worked, and extend it to the facilities and opportunities that remain under-resourced.

As Chair of the Recreation Commission, I made regular delegations from local sport organizations a standing part of our meetings. Every group has had the chance to come before commissioners, explain what they need and hear directly from the people making decisions. It gives LSOs a regular way to advocate for their organizations and build relationships with local government before a problem or major funding request lands in front of us.

Going forward, we need to:

1. Keep the door open. Delegations from sport groups had mostly stopped before I got to the Commission. I brought them back and kept after it, calling groups, lining people up and making sure the agenda slot actually got used. That’s how the Commission hears directly from the sport community now, and I intend to keep doing it.
2. Help the groups doing the heavy lifting. Some of the best facility work here has come from organizations that raised money, chased grants and put in the hours, then asked local government to meet them partway. Nelson Soccer Association, the Civic Theatre Society, the work at Queen Elizabeth fields, the Tennis Club, Nelson Hoops at Lakeside and Nelson Pickleball’s advocacy are all examples.
   
   At Rec No. 5, we formalized feasibility funding for this kind of work. It paid for looking at a combined curling plant at the complex and for Nelson Soccer’s inflatable dome study. I want groups to have a clear process, straight answers on land and permissions, and a reasonable path to local government support when they’ve done the work to move an idea forward.
3. Help hockey grow through consistency. This summer, the RDCK adopted agreements with the Leafs, Rebels and Thundercats using shared language, so the same basic terms apply at all three complexes on allocation, exclusive use, playoff costing and taxpayer-funded benefits. Every agreement used to be negotiated separately. The new approach gives the clubs more certainty and makes it easier to plan beyond a single season.
4. Treat sport as economic development. Through Greater Nelson Economic Development, I want to support a sport event and tourism coordinator at the Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism DMO. A hockey weekend or swim meet uses facilities in more than one town, fills hotels and restaurants across the region and relies on volunteers from several communities. Putting that work at the DMO makes more sense than putting it inside one local government. Right now nobody holds that role, so much of the work falls to club volunteers who already have enough to do.
5. Give outdoor recreation better support. Cycling, climbing and paddling account for a big share of recreation here, but the trails, crags and water access behind them are often treated differently from more traditional recreation infrastructure. The clubs that build and maintain them depend heavily on volunteer labour and one-off grants, which makes long-term planning difficult. We need clearer principles around regular support for outdoor recreation and grant programs that actually work for these kinds of facilities.
6. Improve allocation rules. The Commission has ordered a review of the Recreation Allocation Policy across RDCK recreation services, due back in early 2027. Our region-wide policy puts non-profit youth ahead of other uses, and the current allocation system moved the district a long way forward. Five years in, we’ve also learned where it needs work. That includes clearer language, a better complaints and appeals process, and more staff discretion where the policy regularly produces conflicts between different users.
7. Hire the staff. Aquatics has been running at around 85 percent of 2019 staffing levels, and in 2025 camps were capped with 63 people waitlisted because we couldn’t hire in time. If we can’t hire enough lifeguards and instructors, we can’t run the programs people are asking for.

2) What is the number-one issue facing sport and recreation in our region, and how will you address it?

We aren’t getting full use out of all the facilities we already have, while several of those same facilities are reaching the point where they need major renewal and we don’t have a durable way to pay for it.

The long-term campus review brought both problems into focus. The demand we heard most often was for gymnasium space. At the same time, there are existing gyms seeing limited use by relatively small groups because of exclusive legacy arrangements.

Part of the problem is structural. A group can be dealing with three different bodies depending on the facility. Rec Commission No. 5 manages the Community Complex and North Shore Hall and books the soccer and baseball fields. Regional Parks manages Taghum Beach and the Bonnington fields. The City owns and maintains the baseball fields and the fields at Lakeside and Lions parks. It also owns and leases the Nelson Curling Centre, Nelson Soccer Centre, Civic Centre Dance Studio and Mary Hall, which is currently managed by Selkirk College.

For a user group, that can mean dealing with different organizations for maintenance, booking, insurance and approvals, sometimes for facilities being used as part of the same program or season. The same issue exists outdoors. Trails, crags and water access don’t sit neatly within any one service, so we tend to deal with them case by case rather than as part of the overall recreation system.

Then there is the cost of renewal. The Civic Arena roof and rink need to be brought up to code now that the seismic upgrades on the shared support wall are complete. With the associated refurbishment, the figure we’re currently working with is in the range of over $10 million. The Curling Centre has significant structural problems on its eastern wall that are under assessment but likely fatal. Selkirk College is looking to be released from its obligations for Mary Hall, which needs its own renewal. At the same time, work is underway at Morning Mountain and Lions to establish seasonal ice plants with improved rink facilities.

We cannot pay for all of that out of increasing taxation, depleting reserves and sporadic surpluses.

Going forward, we need to:

1. Sort out who pays for renewal. We need a funding structure agreed to between the City and our RDCK partners. Without one, we end up dealing with each building separately as the need arises, which makes long-term planning difficult and leaves us having the same funding conversation every time another facility needs major work. Refreshing our master plan, including these challenges, and developing long-term financial plans to address them, has to be part of that work.
2. Watch the school gym rollout. The Commission pushed this issue with the school district and the Province, and the District has now developed a community access policy and online booking portal. I’ll be watching the implementation, particularly the cost to users and whether it results in more actual access for gym sports. If it doesn’t, we need to take that back to the District.
3. Create one desk and one process. Liability, insurance and bookings should be handled in one place regardless of who owns the facility, enabled through operating agreements between the City, the RDCK and partners like Selkirk College. The facilities can remain under their existing ownership while we make the process of accessing them much simpler for user groups.
4. Reduce financial barriers. We renewed our programming for people who can’t access sport or facilities because of cost. I think the current allotment restricts that benefit more than it needs to because of concerns about program overuse that haven’t been demonstrated. I’d like to relax that language so more families and other users facing financial barriers can participate.

Some of the groundwork for this is already done. Last term, we restructured the RDCK’s Community Services department so the three recreation campuses in Nelson, Castlegar and Creston share management. That lets us share resources, develop policy and run build programs across the district instead of each complex doing everything independently. The regional agreements with hockey societies adopted across all three complexes this summer are one early result.

We also ran the long-term campus review as a shared engagement between the City and the RDCK. That hadn’t been done before and wasn’t particularly straightforward to organize. Completing surveys were launched on the same day as our engagement. We had two governments with different assets and responsibilities asking the public to look at the recreation system as a whole. The gym access problem was one of the issues that came out of that work.

Thanks again, Andy. See you at the next meeting, and I’m glad to talk with your members directly in the meantime.

Cheers
Keith