
CORNWALL – The city won’t be out any money with the demise of the Cornwall Nationals Federal Hockey League team.
“I can confirm that the Nationals do not have an outstanding balance on their ice rental contract,” Parks and Recreation Division Manager Jamie Fawthrop said in an email to Cornwall Newswatch.
Under the lease agreement, the city’s box office would collect the money from ticket sales and deduct expenses, such as ice rental and security, before the remaining money was transferred to the hockey team.
Fawthrop said the city won’t be adjusting its 2018 budget forecast of $1,023,723 in revenue from fees at the civic complex, which is based on a three year rolling average.
“I think that we’ll leave the projected…revenue as submitted. The Nationals didn’t hold their practices at the civic complex, so it’s only the revenue from their game days that we’ll be looking to replace. It’s our hope (and) expectation that most of that ice time will get booked by other clients,” Fawthrop said.
The city has already been soliciting the public for available ice time on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
While the city may not be out any money, it looks like former team staff and some players ended up on the losing end of the team’s collapse.
Former Nationals public relations spokesperson, Shannon Ferguson, indicated in a posting on her blog, The Love Hawk, last week that she and her business partner, Kris McCarthy, hadn’t been paid for almost three months.
“The most heartbreaking thing is the people that don’t know that Kris and I have been working for free for 11 weeks. That we stopped getting paid long before the players did but continued to soldier on, hoping that the outcome might change,” she wrote.
In a previous interview with Cornwall Newswatch, Nationals owner Rodney Rivette declined to comment when asked if the players paycheques had been in good standing up until Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018.
“The players worked hard for us. I can’t say enough about them,” Rivette said.