Ice Rink Misses Target
The 2007/08 council ice rink attracted 7500 visitors. This year the council decided up the size of their rink in order to attract more visitors and so spent an extra £35,280 on getting a larger rink. The council also said they’d use some of the money saved from leaving a marketing post unfilled to offset the loss from the rink.
The final report is not ready yet, but the estimated visitor numbers are 3000 short of the target 15,000 (though this number was made up on the back of an envelope to justify their scheme in the first place) and £2000 was spent on hiring an additional staff member to bring in sponsorship and bookings (which makes me wonder why they claimed a staff post would be unfilled).
All in all, it looks like the council spent £35,280 for the bigger rink in order to generate £26,500 worth of extra ticket income. Clever.
The 2007/08 losses were £29,312 (though tens of thousands are of course still owed).
The 2008/09 losses look to be £46,787. I’m sure Salford’s tax payers will be over the moon to hear just what a great success this endeavour has been!
5:24 pm on January 9th, 2009
Well they only reached the numbers they did by luring in schools with all sorts of incentives. How many local folk have benefited from this I wonder.
No doubt Johhny will try and justify it all.
Keep up the good work and the others on their toes!!!!
6:29 pm on January 9th, 2009
Cheers Steve for this one.
John Merry where are you? What’s your explanation for this?
6:41 am on January 11th, 2009
I just surfed on in on this one, but is not part of the £35k a one off expenditure which you are comparing with a recurring (presumably) income increase?
Rgds
Matt
9:06 am on January 11th, 2009
Nope - it’s a cost to hire a rink of that size for the time period.
6:32 pm on January 16th, 2009
Can we assume from John Merry’s silence that there can be no justification for this shocking waste of my (and everyone else’s) council tax?
10:42 am on January 17th, 2009
Steve… I think we can reasonably make that assumption.
6:00 pm on January 17th, 2009
I am sorry to say that Cllr Maureen Lea has passed away. I will be delighted to defend the rink annother time.