Powassan Voodoos set to take flight despite lease controversy

The Powassan Voodoos and the Municipality of Powassan have officially reached a contract agreement for the team’s upcoming inaugural season in the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League.

Powassan City Council voted in favour of the new contract during a regular council meeting on Tuesday night, moving the team one step closer to being ready for their season opener.

“We’re really happy to move on and get this over with; we’re really just here for the hockey,” said team co-owner Jim Bruce. “We’re going to turn the page on the business side of the lease and we’re moving forward to the tasks at hand that need to be taken care of to get the guys on the ice.”

The contract, which was signed by Voodoos’ owners and returned to the municipality Wednesday afternoon, is complete just in time for the team to begin their main training camp this weekend.

The agreement is valid for two years and gives the team exclusive rights to the main downstairs dressing room, team management office space and first priority of an upstairs room overlooking the ice.

The team has the option to renew the contract for an additional year at the end of the initial period, and either party can terminate the contract within 60 days notice.

But it wasn’t a quick and easy process for council to reach a decision.

Deputy Mayor Todd White took issue with the contract, attempting to send it back to committee discussions for renegotiation, which was ultimately defeated. Most notably, White said the contract was negotiated in private and would have liked to have seen more public consultation and involvement take place.

“I would’ve really liked to have seen the negotiation take a pause, go back to recreation committee, and have all the user groups that are going to affected have their voices heard at the committee level,” White explained. “Then the contract would be put together in an open forum with the Voodoos, and then it would be put back to council for their vote.

“I’m still a little bit concerned that there’s not a lot in it for our municipality, if anything,” he continued. “Compared to the last contract with the last junior A team, the Eagles, we’re losing about $20,000 in potential revenue, so that’s concerning for me.”

White said he would have preferred to see some aspects of the contract that would give Powassan a slice of the team’s revenue, similar to what teams like the Nipissing Lakers agreed to in their initial contract with the City of North Bay.

“As an elected official, I would hope that we would do our best to not give everything away and just cave,” said White. “Everything has just moved so fast and the excitement, I think, was overwhelming for some people.”

Bruce says he and the ownership group originally requested sole use of the upstairs room, which was to be used as a weight training facility for the players. But the final version of the contract gives the team primary use of the room instead, leaving the option for other teams and groups to use it.

Until now, the room in question has been used as a part-time dressing room for senior hockey players and was constructed by volunteers and donors. White said while he feels very positive about Powassan having a junior team again, he is still frustrated that the heated discussion around the room might not have been necessary in the first place.

“The documents that showed that the back dressing room was already under an agreement with other user groups clearly show that, legally, the municipality really couldn’t give that room away without some legal consultation and talking to the groups that were in the agreement,” White explained. “Somebody had those documents and withheld them throughout the process and I’m really disappointed with that.

“We ended up being in a big, heated debate over certain aspects of the contract that we really couldn’t give away anyways.”

Bruce says the team still plans on installing a mini-gym.

“It’s a business deal and sometimes in those you don’t get the deal that you completely want, and you have to live with it,” Bruce explained. “We’re prepared to live with it, prepared to move on, and get into the hockey.”

“We don’t want to be experts, we don’t want to know all of the political inner-workings,” he continued. “We’re there to have a hockey team and let the people enjoy it as much as we hope to enjoy it ourselves.”

Despite the rocky road to the final agreement though, White says he is relieved the talks are over and feels positive about everything else in the final weeks before the season starts.

And now, with a little more than two weeks before opening puck drop for the Voodoos, Bruce says there’s still a lot to be done.

“Now that we can concentrate our effort on hockey, things will pick up very quickly,” said Bruce. “We still have to finish doing our advertising, building our program, making sure our billets are all ready to go and making sure our equipment gets here on time.

“There’s still a lot of work to do in the three weeks before our home opener.”