Capitol Centre reorganizing after tough year

In light of a year filled with missed ticket sale goals and failed fundraisers, despite quality productions being offered, the Capitol Centre is looking at increasing its budget, asking the City of North Bay for an increase of seven percent for their 2017 operating year to help them restructure their organization moving forward.

“There have been so many changes over the past month,” Dee Adrian said, newly titled executive director of the Capitol Centre. “It’s been on the docket for three years, but we just haven’t had to do the reorganizing, but several factors led to us finally requesting what we needed.”

However, Adrian noted that the seven percent increase is quite deceptive, as the actual city contribution is relatively small, but still crucial to helping the Capitol Centre. Their city levy in 2016 was $348,234 and the proposed increase for 2017 is 372,611, which means the seven percent increase the Capitol Centre’s asking for equates to $24,377.

“Adhering to percentages isn’t fair when looking at a minuscule budget like ours,” she said. Part of the organizational restructuring included Adrian being moved to the position of executive director, while the Capitol Centre searches for a director of business operations to strategically divide managing roles for the benefit of the organization.

During the presentations made by the service partners to city council during budget deliberations, Adrian made it clear that staff at the Capitol Centre have been pushed well passed their limits for some time now.

“I’ve worked like this for 17 years now. The staff here all do so much for the community,” she said, noting the dozens of charitable organizations they donate tickets to when shows don’t reach capacity or the free monthly movies they host which are often at full capacity. “The constant stress makes it hard to commit to the community, doing community work like free tickets, and I think for the most part council isn’t aware of. Something is going to give and if we are important, then we need the funding.”

Adrian said the two major factors are related to limited staff and a dwindling volunteer base and believed a strategic restructuring of some staff at the Capitol Centre would go a long way in relieving stress on a small and overworked staff, as well as present opportunities to really grow the organization.

“Our volunteer base is dwindling,” Adrian said. “When I started there had to be close to 150 volunteers, but now we’re down to about 52. We need a team of dedicated volunteers who want to see this place thrive and survive.

She said plans with the increased funding would include providing the Capitol Centre with a volunteer coordinator to help manage and grow the pool of people willing and able to help with all of the events.

“If we didn’t have the volunteers we’ve had, I don’t know what would happen,” Adrian said.

At the city council table, there wasn’t any real discussion brought up, particularly during their meeting on Monday when council passed the operating budget.