Saskatoon mayor defends potential fees to help fund downtown arena

While Hospitality Saskatchewan is opposed to new fees being levied on hotels and rental cars to help fund a downtown arena project in Saskatoon, the proposed funding streams are being defended by the city’s mayor.

On Wednesday, a city committee will be presented with a report from tax and audit firm KPMG outlining five potential non-property-tax options that could help generate millions of dollars in revenue for the downtown arena project.

Some of those options include adding fees to event tickets, hotel stays and car rentals.

“You can call it what you want – a tax, a fee, a levy,” Mayor Charlie Clark told CKOM Morning Show host Mark Loshack on Tuesday.

“If you go to any hotel almost anywhere in North America, you’ll often see a destination fee, a tourism fee or something like that. It’s a way that communities and local tourism organizations can work together to raise money to help get heads in beds in hotels.”

Clark suggested that half of the hotels in Saskatoon already have such a fee in place.

On Monday, Jim Bence, president and CEO of Hospitality Saskatchewan, said any new fees on the tourism industry wouldn’t be good for business, especially with the sector still recovering after the COVID-19 pandemic and a difficult couple of years.

Clark added that with so many people coming to Saskatoon, it would be a good way to generate extra revenue to pay for a possible new downtown arena.

“We’re wanting to generate revenues from those groups of people who are using the facility and benefiting from the facility,” Clark explained.

“Given those events bring in a lot of people, it’s a way of generating from those kinds of activities.”

On Wednesday, a city committee will review a report outlining potential new fees to help pay for the proposed downtown arena. (City of Saskatoon/Submitted)

Stephanie Clovechuk, the CEO of Discover Saskatoon, said she feels the city needs better infrastructure to support tourism.

“We need to see a business plan and finance model that’s going to indicate how we’re going to move forward with the infrastructure that’s so necessary to our destination right now,” Clovechuk told CKOM/CJME’s John Gormley on Tuesday.

“We’re out in the world singing the song of Saskatchewan and the excellence we have here, but very soon (without proper infrastructure) it’s going to be hard to deliver on the invitation we’re making around the world.”

Clovechuk also said nothing in the report was surprising to her, and echoed Clark’s comments that those fee-based funding methods have been used around the world.

She said she feels a new downtown arena and entertainment district would be huge for Saskatoon and the city’s tourism industry.

“We just hosted the International Conference on Isotopes (and had) 400 international nuclear-medicine physicians from around the world,” Clovechuk said.

“If we’re going to continue to bring in that international investment into our community, then we need to consider the infrastructure advancements that we need.”