Members of both Town of Athabasca and Athabasca County councils have been corrected in their assumption that only one of the Athabasca Performing Arts Centre (APAC) buildings are jointly owned.
Athabasca County Coun. Warren Griffin said he was surprised to find out the County is listed on the 1981 deed for not only the Old Brick School, but also the Nancy Appleby Theatre and Alice B. Donahue Library.
“I think it was just we didn’t know (we were joint owners),” he said. “It’s not what we’ve been told from our predecessors. If that is the case, then why didn’t someone correct us at a point? If we’ve been corrected, well then, we need to adjust accordingly.”
Griffin said the topic came up through conversations between councillors and with county manager Ryan Maier.
“(Maier) wasn’t sure himself. He’d heard the stories and he looked it up, so he relayed it to council,” he said.
Town of Athabasca Mayor Roger Morrill said he assumed all along all three buildings were jointly owned.
“I brought it up in council, because there were some around the council table that indicated they weren’t aware of that, within the Town of Athabasca,” he said. “It didn’t come to me as a surprise when I did see the titles.”
Town of Athabasca Coun. Tanu Evans was one of those who was also under the impression the town was sole owner of the library and theatre.
“This has been an issue brought up many times over the years. I don’t think anyone’s looked into it very closely, though,” he said.
In recent talks over the library’s rent being upped by the Athabasca Regional Multiplex Society (ARMS), Griffin said in the April 4 edition of the Athabasca Advocate that since the library is town-owned, it is their responsibility “to fund the services it provides.”
“We pay for a service, so to pay the utilities and the janitorial and maintenance for the town’s library via the backdoor through the Multiplex in my opinion is unacceptable,” he said last month.
Griffin said after the ownership realization, his previous statement both remains valid and is made null.
“It’s still the Multiplex covering the loss on the building envelope maintenance,” he said. “It’s not that we’re not wanting to provide the service or that we don’t believe in the service, but why are we showing a loss?”
“We’re paying it through the Multiplex and costs on the building are being paid off through the Multiplex, which we thought at the time (the library) was not ours. Now that there is (evidence), councils would have to say what is what,” he added.
Evans said he is slightly disappointed that all three buildings are jointly owned, as he said he has always been an advocate of separating the library and theatre from ARMS.
“Personally, I’d love for the town just to take on the responsibility and control of both the town library and the town theatre complex,” he said. “That’s my view for it. We could utilize it better than the Multiplex has been.”
Morrill said he does not see how newly-realized ownership of the buildings will have an impact.
“We still have a relationship of working with Athabasca County and sharing costs, capital costs as far as repair to these buildings,” Morrill said. “It’s under the mandate of the Multiplex Society, so I think that it should still be business as usual moving forward.”
