Many in the hockey community are disappointed the city will be imposing non-resident user fees at its ice arenas.
Council chambers were packed for last night’s meeting with children and parents hoping to send a message.
Chris Green with Hockey New Brunswick says he doesn’t think this was the right decision.
“I feel like our youth are being used as political chess pieces, and it is unacceptable and frankly inappropriate to ask the youth of this region to shoulder the burden of the financial problems of their community,” he said in an interview.
Green says he was really hoping for a motion to table the discussion so that they could lobby their elected officials to pursue a regional solution.
“I know there will be some angry parents,” he said.
Green says he association is already battling decreasing enrollment and accessibility issues, and increased fees will just make things harder.
“We’re really trying to combat that by you know, making gear cheaper and subsidies for registration. Anything against us hurts so when we have to tell our membership that we’ve got to pay extra money, that’s gonna hurt, that’s gonna hurt all the way through,” he said.
He says registration fees have already been set for next year, and registration is even open in a few associations, making things more difficult.
“It’s going to be hard to describe what our season even looks like next year, and the coming years after that,” he said.
Green says he’s really worried about enrollment dropping, especially at the competitive and elite levels
“We’re just starting to get on the map now with a lot of international competitions, a lot of national competitions. If we start squashing our competitive and elite levels, then it’s going to be a hard time to convince some of those events to come back here,” he said.
The last thing Green wants to see is kids not able to play hockey due to high fees.
“Youth hockey is the pivotal ingredient in the moral fabric that defines us as Canadians, and we need to embrace that. At the end of the day, you can’t use our youth playing hockey as a nuts and bolts deficits kind of number.”