Rosebud looking for County sponsorship

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Rosebud Centre of the Arts is seeking sponsorship from the county to cover the 2015 theatre season.
The proposal came up because the Centre of the Arts felt they were not receiving the proper amount of financial support from the county, who are supposedly putting more money into community arts programs in places such as Strathmore.
The Centre of the Arts has been considered to be a top tourists attraction in the area for 31 years and running.
“The Rosebud School of the Arts has 30 full-time students in our post secondary program and another 45 students taking intensive and short term sessions,” said Adam Furfaro, executive director for Rosebud School of the Arts. “In 2015, we will employ 23 full-time staff and over 125 part-time seasonal and contract staff generating $2.9 million in earned revenue and another $900,000 will come from contributed revenue, private individuals and the Government of Alberta.”
Wheatland Council did not pass the proposal, as more thought has to go into how they want to get on board with the funding.
“I talked to Adam a couple of months ago and they were looking for some funding and I said put together a proposal, so he sent me the proposal. It’s more just information at this point in time, I think council’s direction was to bring it back to the committee as a whole,” said Alan Parkin,
Chief Administration Officer for Wheatland County. “It’ll be up to council when they’re available. So we’ll discuss this at the committee as a whole (meeting) and how they want to tackle that one and we’ll go from there, which I think gives us a considerable amount of time.”

County Briefs
• In November 2014, it was found that the Rosebud School of Arts were incorrectly being billed for electrical in a 10-year period that dates back to 2003, and that Fortis Alberta made a mistake as the electrical payments were supposed to go to the Water Treatment Plant. The school wanted the county to reimburse them for the mistake.
Parkin said that the county has sent the school cheques to compensate the mistake.
The county will pursue this issue further with Fortis Alberta to see what exactly happened with the billing information.
• Wheatland County approved the Agriculture Conservation Coordinator’s one night stay at the Strathmore Travelodge during the Ladies Livestock Lessons seminar in January.