City of Brantford Council supported a Parks and Recreation Department Allocation Policy during their Committee of the Whole – Operations meeting on Tuesday, April 7, 2026.
The item comes as the City is experiencing significant demand for the current recreation amenities used by community and user groups.
“With the growth of the community and becoming increasingly more diverse, efficient planning is critical to ensure that all members of the community can access recreation in a fair and equitable way,” read a staff report. “Growth related issues from user groups along with directives to optimize facility use requires strong processes to assist staff with meeting the diverse needs of the community.”
The report states the absence of a formal allocation policy that’s been approved by Council has resulted in numerous ongoing issues for the Parks and Recreation Department.
“Having flexible rules around allocation, although providing greater flexibility at times, has prevented the department from fully exploring and enabling online permitting processes,” the report reads. “A formalized process ensures transparency, fairness and equity which will result in significant improvements to customer service, maximizing facility usage, revenue generation, and accountability.”
Staff said an approved “Brantford residents first” allocation policy will provide a formal framework that guides the allocation of recreational amenities like sports fields, pools, arenas, and community gymnasium and spaces. A formal and effective framework will act as a guideline for frontline booking staff work with users and user groups, and assist staff in making complicated decisions.
Lori-Dawn Cavin, Brantford’s Manager of Community Recreation and Events, said that in order to develop the policy, the department did extensive internal and consultation to develop a host of key findings and gather feedback.
She said the next step is to receive Council’s approval to fully implement the policy.
“The most notable changes to existing processes include support of a ‘Brantford residents first’ approach by removing and resetting historical user status for all existing non-local user group access to prioritize our local user groups. This one-time reset will prioritize our local groups to access additional space they may need,” she said. “Also, to confirm a maximum number of ten major aquatic meets per year at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre; major aquatics meets result in significant program cancellations that displace members from accessing pool programming such as Aqua Fit classes and lane swimming. Although members are understanding of being displaced from time to time, staff are recommending that displacement due to major meets be limited to ten times per year and not to exceed two times per month.”
She said that staff will also implement a newly established permit timeline schedule that outlines booking windows based on priority.
“Following this established schedule will improve the performance of issuing permits to user groups. Once approved, staff will work with all user groups to prepare for the implementation of a new permit amendment fee [$8.85] effective January 1, 2027,” said Cavin. “The intent of this fee is to significantly reduce the administrative burden associated with permit changes. And lastly, staff are recommending to eliminate the walking track rental fee effective January 1, to reduce track closures for many community members that depend on using the track for daily physical activity.”
The only time people will be charged to use the Wayne Gretzky Centre walking pad is during ticketed events on Rink One.
Council then heard from representatives from Brantford Aquatic Club, Brant Artistic Swimming Club, Brantford City Soccer, Brantford Minor Basketball, Brantford Sports Council, and Paul Monné.
Many expressed support for the policy, sharing their own experience with dealing with non-local user groups, and saying that Brantford residents should be able to use their own facilities.
“On several occasions, out-of-town athletes have been prioritized over long standing local clubs that have served this community for decades. These clubs are funded by our residents, supported by our residents, and relied upon by our residents,” said Julia Wheeler, head coach for the Brant Artistic Swimming Club. “When their training time is disrupted, it directly affects athlete development, program stability and overall quality of sport in this city. This is not simply a scheduling issue. It is a question of fairness and responsibility. Our facilities are funded by local taxpayers. Our youth programs are built by local volunteers and families, and when external groups are given priority over resident based clubs, it undermines the very purpose of a community recreation system.”
Councillors later took the opportunity to ask staff further questions and provide their own comments.
“I just want to thank the staff and user groups, the thousands and thousands of volunteers making these programs in our community work, whether it be baseball, soccer, swimming, football, whatever it be. Many of them have been involved for a couple generations, and we could never pay the amount of volunteers we have,” said Councillor Carpenter. “In today’s age when we have kids on social media and on their phones like they are, if we can keep them off their phones for any amount of time by being involved in a local sports activity is certainly a blessing, and we are all looking to make that happen more and more. This is more important today than it’s ever been, and the volunteers are more needed than they’ve ever been needed. So thank you for all that you’ve done and for all coming here. I just want to thank the staff for the report.”
Councillor Mandy Samwell shared similar sentiments, thanking those who offered their input, as well as staff for the policy.
“It looks like there’s been a lot of thoughtful consideration and consultation that’s gone into this,” she said. “I was pleased to see the focus on seniors and youth, and overall, I’m supportive of the direction, but I just wanted to make sure that we’re balancing the structure with enough flexibility to support our Brantford clubs and are inclusive of neighbourhood level of programming that helps build a strong community.”
Councillor Dan McCreary asked several questions about the Wayne Gretzky Centre, as well as the Steve Brown Sports Complex and the policy limiting any new events at the location.
“Steve Brown becoming our major event venue has resulted in significant complaints from the neighbours,” Cavin responded. “I believe that with the Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament, Canada Day and the Call Home Festival, which is a multi day event, staff feel that we’re putting that [neighbourhood] through enough. We have written into the policy that we will limit three signature events per year there.”
Mayor Kevin Davis then proposed the following amendment to the policy:
“That the residents of the City of Brantford and Six Nations of the Grand River be granted priority access to registration for all City-operated recreation programs and lessons, such that registration for these residents shall open no less than 24 hours in advance of registration opening to non-residents. That staff directed to implement the necessary administrative process to support this priority registration system, including verification of residency where appropriate.”
Speaking to his amendment, Davis explained that as the community has changed and grown over time, so has the demand for sports.
“Unfortunately, the facilities themselves can’t keep up with that growth. The reason why we’ve had groups from outside the community able to utilize our facilities is because ten or 15 years ago, we had the capacity, and so we would bring users in because they’d help pay for the cost of operating these facilities,” he said. “That’s now changed. Ten or 15 years ago we probably had around 85,000 people living in Brantford and now it’s 110,000. We have many more people that are living here in Brantford. Fortunately, we’ve been proving very attractive for young families as well, and so the demand for our sports facilities has grown.”
Davis said that municipalities like the County of Brant and the City of Waterloo both have ways of ensuring their residents have priority to facilities, and “the report reflects that we have to start advancing the interests of Brantford residents first.”
“There’s a good reason to do it, because all our programs run on the basis of what we charge for,’ he continued. “The fee for a program is designed to cover 50 per cent of the cost, and so the other 50 per cent of the cost of many of our programs come from Brantford taxpayers.”
Davis said the reason he included Six Nations in his amendment is to reflect the City’s commitment to truth and reconciliation, and that the change would really only apply to individuals applying for recreation activities like swimming lessons and day camps, not sports groups as a whole.
The amendment was unanimously approved, noting that Councillors John Sless, Greg Martin and Linda Hunt were not present for the meeting.
The item, as amended, was later supported unanimously and will come back to Council for final approval on Tuesday, April 28, 2026.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
