Leaside Hockey Tournament
At 11 a..m. yesterday, 140 people crammed into Committee Room One at City Hall -- many of them in business attire -- a sure sign that our elected officials are meddling in sensitive territory.
And in Toronto, nothing is more sacred than a sheet of ice on which to skate.
Laura Wilson provided my favourite tear-jerker moment. Her son plays in the Greater Toronto Hockey League. Her younger daughter plays in the Toronto Leaside Girls Hockey Association. Her elder daughter wanted to join Leaside Girls, too, but that league, citing a lack of ice, couldn't accept her.
The poor daughter ended up in a makeshift league, with girls 10 through 18, playing all over town, from Moss Park arena downtown to Agincourt arena in Scarborough.
"The winning goal in the championship game was scored on a slapshot from the blue line by an 18-year old on a 10-year-old goalie," Ms. Wilson emoted. "My daughter did not feel good about that." Her solution? "The city must take over ice allocation at all the arenas," she says.
City staff, bolstered by Mayor David Miller, agrees. Yesterday the Community Development and Recreation Committee debated a city proposal to take over ice allocation at eight arenas currently run by community boards of management. "We believe that in the long run a centralized approach will achieve equity goals," said Brenda Patterson, general manager of Parks, Forestry and Recreation.
But is this really the solution? Ms. Patterson herself counts 8,200 community house league hockey players in the eight board-run arenas, compared with 13,800 players on the city's 40 ice pads. In short, the rinks controlled by local communities average 1,000 players each, whereas the city-run rinks average just 300 players each.
Leaside Girls convinced the mayor last fall that the city must take over the board-run rinks because the North Toronto arena turned down its request for ice time. But can the city really do a better job?
"North Toronto Arena is full," Graham Lloyd, who sits on the North Toronto arena board, told the committee. "96% of ice time goes to youth." By contrast, he said, "There are 9,000 sheets of your own ice, prime time [on the 40 rinks the city manages] that are not allocated. I presented that to Ms. Patterson at a meeting recently. I notice it's not in her report."
The crowd applaused.
The eight community-run rinks recover all their costs. Meanwhile, city-run rinks only recover 60% of their costs, and among them cost taxpayers $13-million a year.
"We will actually make a profit and we will not charge the city one penny," said Brooke Biscoe, chair of the board of management at the Leaside Memorial Community Gardens, built in 1951 with community money.
His solution to the ice shortage: build a second pad in Leaside. In one glimmer of reason yesterday, Ms. Patterson said the city may put a second Leaside pad in its capital budget next year.
Last night at 8:15 p.m., reason prevailed. Councillors Paul Ainslie (Scarborough East) Cliff Jenkins (Don Valley West) and John Parker (Don Valley West) approved a motion that would centralize applications for ice but allow arena boards to continue allocating ice time. Councillors Joe Mihevc (St. Paul's) and Janet Davis (Beaches-East York) were unsuccessful in stripping the boards of that power.
The motion to retain the boards' authority goes to Council Feb. 23 for approval.
It's nice to see councillors come to their senses. This debate was reminding me of last year, when City Hall felt the need to micromanage new offerings of street food by building and owning its own carts. We spent endless hours and countless dollars, missed the opportunity to unleash the savoury flavours of our cultural mosaic, and everyone went back to eating hot dogs.
We should harness the spirit of our most entrepreneurial and committed citizens, many of whom -- judging by the meeting yesterday -- spend their spare time on the boards of local hockey rinks. In fact, as Jim Oreto, the manager of Bill Bolton Arena (at Bathurst and Dupont streets) suggested: "Maybe the city should look at putting in Boards of Management in the city-run arenas, to foster a sense of local community. We all know that the hockey leagues in Scarborough have declined from 10,000 people to 2,500 people. Do you think someone at City Hall is going to solve that?"
Toronto/AM640
12/4/2009
A girls hockey league is claiming victory after Toronto city council voted Friday to force the boards of eight arenas to submit full ice-time allocations for the 2010-11 season. The 32-7 vote ends several days of debate on the issue of the amount of ice time devoted to girl's hockey. It all started with a letter to Mayor David Miller from the Toronto Leaside Girls Hockey Association. They had complained the city doesn't enforce its own equity policy at its arenas. The group uses 18 public and private arenas to meet its ice-time needs. Private rinks can cost more than twice as much per hour as city-owned rinks. Association president Ron Baker says the ruling simply means equitable allocation of ice time to all users.
