The Town of Ste Anne has given the green flag for the Ste Anne Curling Club to go ahead with this season.

After a number of poor seasons and the accumulating deficit of now 17,000 dollars, Ste Anne town council approached the Curling Club and advised them that if they don’t have a solid financial plan in place to bring in sufficient revenue, there potentially wouldn’t be a curling season this year.

Robert Regnier a board member of the Ste Anne Curling Club says their board is composed mainly of new members as of the last year or two and adds this was quite the wake-up call for them. He notes their hard work has paid off so far.

“I was very happy that they accepted the proposal as is, we worked pretty hard even just getting a show of support from the town. We held some emergency meetings, a lot of people showed up and it was very clear that people want curling to keep going in Ste Anne. People love their sport, they love getting together on a regular basis so I’m glad we’ll be able to keep doing that.”

Council was unanimous in approving the motion with the condition that the Curling Club and council would meet in early 2018 to review where the club is at financially and to determine if curling will continue in Ste Anne for the 2018-2019 season. 

Regnier notes through this process it’s been clear that people want curling to continue in the town of Ste Anne and says this can only be possible continue to support the club in years to come.

“It's great because all these people that were looking forward to curling will now get to curl. The hard work doesn’t end though, the board’s still going to have to work hard to make sure that we balance our budget this year and put stuff in place so that we can be sustainable for the long term. On the other side, I like and fully respect that the town didn’t want to continue supporting deficit. I’m pleased that they’re fiscally responsible and that when organizations trip, they held up to the task to do better. I feel like the board did stand up and we reorganized and we’re glad the curling season will keep going.”

Regnier adds one thing that has come up in their registration is, there are definitely people from the town of Ste. Anne, but there’s a lot of people from the surrounding area as well. He says not just the RM of Ste Anne but other neighbouring municipalities as well noting those RM’s need to step up and help these kinds of activities because as much as it benefits the Town of Ste Anne, it benefits everyone else as well.

Regnier notes their rent for the year is 35,000 dollars on top of all their internal expenses. He says they plan to pay the debt off over the next five years.

“The debt that’s left is $17,000 so we had a big deficit last year. We’re going to pay some of it down right away and the rest of it we’ll negotiate with the town come early next year. It’s probably going to turn out that we’ll just pay it out over a five year period but that’s only possible if the club is viable and we have five years of balanced budgets and a little bit of extra to pay the debt down.”

Regnier says registration is significantly stronger this year noting they have 9 men's teams, 8 ladies teams and 9 mixed teams. He adds they currently have 15 junior curlers signed up but says their goal is to grow that since they are the future of the Ste Anne Curling Club.