Portage College announced earlier today that the City of Cold Lake has accepted a proposal from the college to purchase the naming rights to the Voyageurs men’ s hockey for the next three years.
Portage College announced earlier today that the City of Cold Lake has accepted a proposal from the college to purchase the naming rights to the Voyageurs men’ s hockey for the next three years.
The decision means the team will be based out of college’ s Cold Lake campus beginning next season.
But the college is receiving criticism from bout local residents and Lac La Biche County council as the decision by the City of Cold Lake came only hours after council announced they had reconsidered a previous offer from Portage to purchase the naming rights. College President and CEO Trent Keough responded to the criticism by saying council made an untimely decision that was more about drama than business.
Keough said that the college began discussions with the county about becoming business partners in running the team last summer and presented a proposal to council on Jan. 30 of this year.
The proposal requested $100,000 a year for three years from council in exchange for the county getting naming rights and various other rights to the college.
“In this presentation, it was detailed that we were offering this to Lac La Biche County, and if the county chose not to proceed, that the team was finished because we could not afford to maintain it,” he said.
Keough said the county responded with a letter offering the college the equivalent of $15,000 in funding.
“We asked for $100,000,” Keough said, “We told the county we were looking elsewhere.”
But Keough said his biggest confusion with the situation is the county’ s decision to accept the offer of the team so close to when Cold Lake’ s council was coming to their own verdict. He questioned what the county was doing in between the college’ s January proposal and their decision to accept it yesterday.
“At the eleventh hour we suddenly get a $300,000 reversal, I can’ t explain it,” he said. “We offered them a deal and they turned it down, we offered Cold Lake a deal and they accepted it. Now Cold Lake is the proud owner of Portage College’ s team name. If Lac La Biche wants it, they need to negotiate with Cold Lake, and I’ ll be happy to play in either place.”
But according to County Mayor Omer Moghrabi, council never officially turned down the deal. He also said he did not have knowledge of when Portage would be making their offer to Cold Lake and that the college should have known council would be discussing it this week.
“I had no timelines of when they were going to be doing all of this,” said Moghrabi. “We never turned down the offer technically, we said we’ d pay for this and that.”
He said a lot of people are upset with the announcement of the move and that yesterday was the first opportunity council had enough time to discuss the issue and was planned in advance.
“It was on the meeting’ s agenda and those are available on the Thursday [preceding meetings],” he said. “It was public knowledge.”
Moghrabi also expressed his disappointment with Cold Lake’ s council for their decision.
“It says something about a municipality’ s integrity to take something from another municipality,” he said. “I would never do that.”
Portage College is scheduled to have a board meeting that is open to the public tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the college, which Moghrabi says he will be in attendance for. He also hopes he will be allowed to speak during it.
“I’ m going to try and see if I can be put on the agenda,” he said. “We’ ll see what they have to say.”
