City Council has accepted a deficit from the now-dissolved Lloydminster Facilities Corporation, coming in at more than $1 million. An audit by Wilkinson Livingston Stevens LLP reported a deficit of $1,055,247.36 from the remaining account balances for the Lloydminster Facilities Corporation as of December 31.
Accepting the deficit comes as part of the corporation’s dissolution process. Council first heard of an imbalance in the LFC’s books last May and voted to dissolve the corporation last October. An audit in February 2018 found that from 2010 to 2017, the LFC spent an average of $125,000 to $140,000 per year on the Lloydminster Golf and Curling Centre.
These costs did not follow the city’s policies and procedures. Mayor Aalbers admits the costs of operating the LGCC weren’t very transparent before, and now we’re getting to the true costs.
“I think that’s the important part, we’ve got to the true costing now. We’ve identified some areas that we believe will help relieve some of those cost drivers, and turn the page. To use an example, now the restaurant is leased out we went from a net loss that the report showed to a positive because now we’re getting rental income,” says Aalbers.
Going forward, Aalbers says the costs of the facility will be more transparent, as he believers council and taxpayers would like them to be. Councillor Jonathan Torresan agrees that previously some errors were kept hidden before being consolidated in the city’s books. He adds that there are amounts being received by the city just as much as there are amounts owing.
“You don’t have to pay anyone a million dollars just to make this liability go away, but at the same time, it’s a recognition of the errors in the hiding of this in the past within those books and them being consolidated within the city’s statements, and it wasn’t something that was super transparent in the past,” says Torresan.
Future budgets will now show the true costs of operating the LGCC, just the same as any other city facility. Torresan says this will be much more transparent and open about how tax revenue is spent.