Prince Edward County is taking steps to help the Prince Edward Fitness and Aquatic Centre purchase their current building.
The campaign to support the aquatic facility was discussed during Tuesday’s council meeting. Council chambers were filled beyond capacity, with supporters of the facility overflowing into a second waiting room.
Council heard a deputation from the aquatic centre, along with comments from more than 10 individual residents, requesting the county’s help in their current fundraising campaign.
In August, the current owners of the building the aquatic centre rents, announced their intent to sell the property. Now the aquatic centre is trying to raise the funds to purchase the building outright so they can remain in the facility. The public pool facilities there provide a number of recreation and fitness programs that benefit a wide range of county residents, from swimming lessons for children to aquatic fitness courses for the elderly.
As a non-profit, the aquatic centre cannot issue charitable tax receipts, which makes fundraising harder. As part of the council meeting agenda, a motion was put forward to have the municipality accept donations on the aquatic centre’s behalf, and issue charitable tax receipts for them.
During discussion, Councillor John Hirsch spoke in favour of supporting the aquatic centre.
“Whenever we have major issues in the county, council gets lots of emails. Most of the time they take the nature of form letters, not this time,” said Councillor Hirsch. “You’ve all told us your personal stories about why PEFAC is so important to you, what’s done for you, people who are recovering from injury, all kinds of different stories. They have been fascinating and very important.”
During a brief discussion on the motion, two amendments were put forward. The first amendment was proposed by Councillor Brad Nieman, and would allow $20,000 of the $70,000 of funding the aquatic centre is set to receive in 2026 from the city, to be moved from capital spending to operations, allowing the aquatic centre to use those funds for the purchase if needed.
A second amendment was proposed by Councillor Hirsch to add an additional $100,000 to the funding the aquatic centre is set to receive as part of the 2026 budget talks. The additional funding would be added to the draft budget, and would still need to be approved in the budget process.
Both amendments were passed, and the main motion was passed as amended.
