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Arts board hoping for sustainable future

Jul 4, 2011 | 6:43 AM

For the last three years, the Prince Albert Arts Board has been dealing with deficits, but with change on the horizon, there is hope to turn that around.

The change comes in the form of a newly elected board of directors, renewed funding and support from the city.

“We’ll be more sustainable with the more realistic funding from the city of Prince Albert,” said Mitch Holash, long-time board member.

“We became tremendously successful on the access side and we tried to find a way to get back into the discussions with the city to help us balance the programming — which was very successful — with the cost,” he said.

The cost at times was quite high. For 2010, that deficit reached $193,000. It’s part of a trend that started with reduction in funds from the city in 2008.

Since 2003, the board has had four substantial deficits, three modest surpluses and one significant surplus.

One of the largest contributors to the deficit was that the E. A. Rawlinson Centre has been hosting more than 240 events each year, well above the 60 originally planned when it opened, Holash said.

“We needed to engage in those discussions … when there was a tremendous imbalance between the financial model and the successful programming, we were basically cut loose, without paid staff to run the operations of the centre and at the same time when there were supposed to be budget talks they were unilaterally cutting our grant.”

Holsah said despite that they were able to operate on volunteer power and even secure a surplus in 2007 of more than $100,000, but it simply wasn’t sustainable.

As well, the council of the day withdrew the services of the city’s finance and community services departments and also scaled back funding.

Now, those services are again available to the board and funding can be increased as the board’s financial documents are made available after being approved by the new board.

Mayor Jim Scarrow said it was right for the city to continue its cultural investment into the arts board.

“We must not lose track of how much funds are raised through admissions, through the use of the facility and corporate sponsorships,” he said.

“So the city share is actually to the range of where we’re supporting most other facilities including recreational facilities.”

Now that the board has been selected, though some seats are currently unfilled, Holash said they’ll spend the summer continuing to balance activity days with funding.

adesouza@panow.com