A recent audit completed by the city reveals that the golf and curling centre has been falling short in budgeting resulting in owing the City of Lloydminster $1 million.
The Lloydminster Golf and Curling Centre is run by the city-owned, Lloydminster Facilities Corporation (LFC) that was established in 2010 as a separate municipal body from the city. The reason behind this move was because of a Saskatchewan legislation that prevented the city from holding a liquor license, which would suspend liquor sales at the golf course.
In early 2017, the mayor and city council asked for an audit of the LFC after a lack of transparency in operational costs to run the facility. The audit was completed in February 2018 and showed that an average of $125,00 to $140,000 a year was spent on the facility from 2010 to 2017 that did not follow the city’s policies and procedures.
Mayor Gerald Aalbers says the audit solved a lot of questions that the community and the city had, but didn’t solve everything.
“Audit showed that there was money expended at the golf and curling centre to cover expenses and that from a budgetary perspective it wasn’t the processes and procedures in place that I’d like to see and I believe that was saw by council as well.”
The city has also asked for a operational review on the facility, which was approved in early 2018. Councilor Jonathan Torresan says the review will provide more insight on how the facility is being run and should be run.
“Will provide us with an opportunity to look at what is it suppose to look like, what is it suppose to cost taxpayers, and how is it suppose to function in a more efficient and organized way so that we don’t run into the issues we’ve got with this facilities corp. moving forward.”
The operational review will also determine the city’s next steps in regards to managing the golf and curling centre and if the LFC is necessary to run the facility. Aalbers says the discussions will be ongoing and that they will look at both the benefits and negatives of the LFC.