WEEKEND RATES
The Vancouver School Board is slashing weekend rental surcharge rates for some facilities as part of a pilot project to encourage community use.
The district handles more than 4,000 rental contracts annually for fields, gymnasiums, auditoriums, classrooms and other spaces in its 109 schools.
The charge for weekends has always been higher than on weekdays to cover extra expenses such as staffing costs, which resulted in reduced weekend use. The rental rate isn't changing but the weekend surcharge, which was $77.30 per hour, has dropped to $25 per hour-a reduction of more than $50-at select locations for the pilot, which runs from Jan. 7 until June 9.
The impact on some sample spaces on Saturdays, before HST and contract fee, is as follows: auditorium and theatre spaces drop from $222.20 per hour to $169.90 per hour, secondary gymnasiums drop from $124.90 per hour to $72.60 per hour, and classrooms drop from $90.70 per hour to $38.40 per hour.
"[We have had] very intensive use of our schools on weekdays, probably something in the order of 70 per cent capacity, and very little on weekends, maybe 20 per cent. And also there's the dynamic of who's using the space," explained Liam Coughlan, the district's acting rentals and leases supervisor. "The vast majority of people using the space was the paying public and the majority of the people using the space on the weekend was our internal groups that don't have to pay the access and can let themselves in. I believe the school district takes very seriously their mandate to provide access to the community. We've done a really good job on weekdays, not so much on weekends."
The VSB is hopeful the changes will lead to more and better use of schools on weekends so there are multiple groups on site-if classrooms are being used, it makes sense to try and rent out the gymnasium as well. "We're trying to create weekend centres- some condensed use where we can spread our costs around and therefore charge less to the individual group, so we get some kind of economies of scale at some sites," Coughlan said, adding, "We're not going to get rich on this."
The object is to-at the very least-cover costs because the board isn't allowed to lose money on rentals. Last year, the VSB's overall rental revenue was about $2 million-$1.6 million after expenses. "In the longterm, if [the pilot] is successful, we can staff in different ways or structure things in different ways. It could be significant in the future, but during this pilot project at best we're going to get 10s of 1,000s of dollars. So if you look at the numbers, it's small potatoes but it's an important thing to make available to the community," Coughlan said, adding, ".For this pilot project to be a success, it needs to have not cost us money."
One new group has already signed up at the new rate-the Vancouver Women's Floor Hockey League.
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