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If you have never been inside Rutherford Rink, consider yourself lucky. It’s a dive — one of the worst hockey rinks I have ever been into as a player or as a fan. Parts of it are condemned and it has needed to be replaced for as long as I remember.

Yet, the University of Saskatchewan and the Province of Saskatchewan have never made its replacement a priority. There have been rumblings about it for years, but it wasn’t until recently that an attempt to privately raise the money was made.

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The campaign raised a lot of money, but not enough to start construction this year. Instead of extending the fundraising, the rink went to city council, which donated $3 million of our taxpayer money to the campaign. That is pretty unprecedented.

City hall had already promised just under $1 million for access to the rinks for minor hockey. Of course, that makes almost no sense either, as the rent for the facility will still be at market rates. It is access that teams would have because of the revenue needs of the facility.

A short time later, the fundraisers came back and asked for $3 million to cover the shortfall from their lack of fundraising. According to them, the city had a responsibility to do more because other governments didn’t want to fund it. It took a while, but eventually a majority of city councillors and the mayor said, “Here you go.” In a city where we can’t afford snow clearing or the money for garbage pickup every week, we just gave away $3 million to bail out another level of government.