Dan Falloon
A Fort Frances man is still irked over town council’s decision last month to deny his bid to offer a skate-sharpening service at the Memorial Sports Centre.
“Any good rink’s got a skate sharpener in it,” argued Paul Cousineau, who already sharpens skates for the Muskie boys’ team as well as the Fort Frances Lakers and Thunderhawks.
“I’ve been everywhere from Toronto, to Detroit, and Des Moines, Iowa,” he noted. “Every rink I’ve been to, that’s a decent rink, has got a skate sharpener in it.
“We’ve got one of the nicest facilities going,” he added. “And when they built it, they built a special room just for skate sharpening, and now they’re not going to support it.”
Cousineau was the only person to respond to a request for proposals by the town. But at its meeting Dec. 14, council voted to approve a report suggesting the contract not be awarded.
Cousineau’s one-page proposal outlined payment to the town for use of the space, offering to pay $1 for each pair of skates sharpened and then five percent of annual gross sales.
The proposal also noted the business only would offer skate sharpening from 5-9:30 p.m. on weeknights and on weekends as needed.
Coun. Rick Wiedenhoeft, who voted against the proposal, said his main opposition was that Cousineau’s business would not be fair to existing ones.
“The biggest thing for me is that we’ve got three businesses in town that offer this service already,” he noted. “They pay taxes and one of them is very close to the arena, only two minutes away, really.
“I didn’t want to give, or appear to be giving, consideration to a business that is using the town space, is using the town electricity . . . I didn’t want to be supporting one business against another.
“I didn’t want to appear that we’re giving this business an advantage over the other business by giving him a space to work in for relatively free,” Coun. Wiedenhoeft continued.
“He was going to use our facility. He was going to use our electricity, and it’s almost that we’re bonusing this business against the others that exist and are paying taxes in this community already.
“That was my biggest concern.”
Coun. Wiedenhoeft said he isn’t opposed to running a business in the arena space, but made it clear the business would have to operate on a level playing field.
“It would have to be a substantial cost involved for that individual to run out of the arena because they get the space, they get the electricity, they could have a lot of benefits from working out of the arena,” he explained.
“They have a captive audience and so to me, it’s just not fair if they’re not paying a substantial amount to equalize what these other businesses are paying in taxation.
“There would have to be a fairly significant financial contribution from anyone that is opening a business in the arena that would equalize, not necessarily the taxation rate of the other businesses that exist, but at least that we would not be subsidizing one business against another,” he reiterated.
In addition to providing the service for teams, Cousineau also offers to sharpen skates of minor hockey players in a pinch.
“I don’t know how many kids I’ve done during a game,” he remarked. “They’re are skating off the ice saying, ‘Mr. Cousineau, Mr. Cousineau, can you fix my skate?’
“I sharpen it, I hand it back to them, and away they go.
“But right now that’s free because I can’t charge anything,” Cousineau noted.
Cousineau and Wiedenhoeft have clashed before over the free service.
“To me, that’s not fair, either, because people are going to hold off getting their skates sharpened knowing that, ‘Ah, geez, if I run into a problem at the arena, Paul’s going to be there to sharpen my skates,’” said Coun. Wiedenhoeft.
“And if he’s doing that on the side for free, then that, too, is going to take away business from people who would normally sharpen their skates prior to the kid needing them,” he reasoned.
Community Services manager George Bell had been in contact with Cousineau during the time the proposal was drafted, and ultimately recommended to council that it not be accepted.
He said he had suggested to Cousineau that the shop should maintain a partnership with the Fort Frances Minor Hockey Association, where the association would receive $1 of each sharpening in addition to what Cousineau would pay to the town.
Such an agreement with the FFMHA had been talked about in early discussions, but was not present in Cousineau’s final proposal.
“In my conversations with Paul, I indicated that it was key to his business being successful that if there wasn’t an incentive for people from minor hockey to go there and get their skates sharpened, they wouldn’t go there,” said Bell.
“They’re going to go there because minor hockey was going to get a cut.
The problem is, ‘Is the business viable?’ and he needed some sort of niche there that would cause people to go there and get their skates sharpened.
“We sat there for the last four or five years with a skate sharpener but nobody getting their skates sharpened,” Bell noted.
FFMHA president Wayne Strachan wanted to see a skate sharpener in the arena for the upcoming season, and board members were discussing purchasing one of their own before talking to Cousineau.
“We were thinking ourselves of purchasing a skate sharpener and different board members learning how to sharpen skates,” recalled Strachan.
“Between the five or six of us that were willing to learn how to sharpen them, and there should have been the option of one of us being around the rink if the skate sharpening was needed.
“Further looking into it, we realized that Paul had his own machine and we approached Paul to see if he would kind of go in as a partner,” added Strachan. “It would be his machine and whatnot, and he would train a certain amount of the board members to help him.
“And as it was, he turned it more into a business, I guess, a venture for himself, and he presented that to the town council.”
Cousineau said he gave the idea more thought and determined that volunteers might not have done a job that was up to the quality residents expect.
“What would happen if I trained people to volunteer to sharpen skates, and they didn’t do a good job, that would basically ruin the business,” he argued. “What I was worried about is the people who are down there right now are there every hour they can be.
“They’re not going to want to spend hours sharpening skates.
“My intention was to hire people now to run the business, and in doing so, I wouldn’t be able to give minor hockey the cut that, originally, we had talked about,” Cousineau added.
“I did talk to George Bell before they had the meeting, that if the business did well, I would give money towards, to, minor hockey. The busier I was, the more I’d give to them.
“That wasn’t in the proposal, that wasn’t written, but George Bell knew that before the decision was made.
“When I talked to George about it, it was after the proposal was done, and when they had their meeting, I was working,” he added.
Bell said he and Cousineau had talked about the “voluntary” contribution, but wasn’t sure it would provide enough incentive to the arena customers.
Cousineau also wondered aloud as to whether the grant to help build the Ice For Kids Arena stated a local business must be set up in the space that was designed for skate sharpening.
But Bell said there was no such requirement.
“The rationale of the grant was that we would have opportunities for business,” said Bell. “It doesn’t expect it to be subsidized.
“A business venture has to have to ability to make a profit, and for the last 10 years that skate sharpening has operated in here, they can’t make any money,” he noted.
