The City of Grande Prairie will no longer provide the Grande Prairie Storm with free ice for development programming like skills camps and spring hockey.
In previous years, ice time for offseason programs was covered by the city, and this year, the committee in charge of the matter recommended council to do the same.
Despite the recommendation to cover expenses completely, council decided to cover instead, 50 per cent of the fees related to the Storm’s offseason programming, which Mayor Jackie Clayton says comes from a place of fairness to other springtime sports programs in the city.
“Council agreed that we appreciated their intent to have low-cost recreation and in particular access to low-cost hockey, but we also discussed and debated about the fact that there still needed to be some charge,” she says. “It couldn’t be completely free as other organizations are running sports camps and have costs associated with those camps, so we settled on the 50 percent discount on the ice for those development camps.”
However, council did approve some new arrangements with the Storm, including their continued support of large-scale events like the home opener, Indigenous Night, playoff festivities, and the prospects camp.
