The Boyle School Parent Advisory Council (PAC) is asking for public support in lobbying to be moved from a St. Albert casino to Fort McMurray for fundraising.
Council chair Candy Nikipelo said there is a significant difference in the funds awarded to groups who work casinos in St. Albert versus Fort McMurray.
“A St. Albert casino generates roughly $16,000, and they come around every two to three years,” she explained.
Fort McMurray casinos can generate nearly four times as much money for volunteer groups on a more frequent basis, according to Nikipelo.
“They make $50,000 to $60,0000, and that is almost yearly,” she said. “Those casinos come about much quicker than the casinos in St. Albert.”
Nikipelo said the Boyle PAC shares casino funds with the Boyle Fitness Centre.
“When you take the $16,000 and divide it by two, we are only getting about $8,000 every two years from a casino,” she explained.
She said the PAC has been lobbying Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater MLA Jeff Johnson.
When asked why they were assigned a casino in St. Albert to begin with, Nikipelo said she isn’t sure.
“When they were handed out years ago, there was no rhyme or reason,” she said. “We feel that it is such an unfair thing.”
Each casino requires the same number of hours (about 12) from volunteers and the same number of volunteers.
“The difference in money — it’s such a disparity that it is a slap in the face,” she explained. “We are one of the only parent council groups in our whole school division that has the St. Albert casino.”
Nikipelo also wants to see the government step in and regulate the amount of money groups get.
“If you are an Edmonton group and you are working casinos in Edmonton, they are making upwards of $90,000,” she said. “It is not an even distribution of the funds.”
Nikipelo said the council is looking for letters to be sent to local MLA Jeff Johnson to address the issue.
“We would certainly like some response and investigative work from Jeff Johnson’s office to know that they are working on it for us and they are striving to provide some equity amongst the groups,” she said. “A couple years ago, Boyle Minor Hockey was switched up to a Fort McMurray casino, which was out of the blue. We are hoping Jeff can help us out as well.”
Nikipelo thinks the school is more deserving of a Fort McMurray casino than a minor hockey league.
“When you are talking about the population that it serves, the school serves a much greater population,” she said. “With all the cutbacks, schools have to rely on casinos more and more to provide all the extras that the school cannot afford.”
The school has approached the PAC seeking funds for new chairs for the gymnasium.
“Our chairs in our gymnasium are the same chairs that were there when I went to school, and I graduated about 28 years ago,” she said. “If we had a Fort McMurray casino, that would be a no-brainer for us to help them.”
