By KEVIN BERGER, Local Journalism Initiative
City of Martensville councillors approved a request during their May 5 meeting to waive $4,500 in rental fees for the Maddogs minor football program, which will be moving their fall practices into the Williams Family Field House at the Martensville Recreation Centre (MRC).
Last year, the Maddogs were forced to move their home games from Martensville to Warman partially due to the poor condition of the Maddogs’ usual football field from drainage issues.
Director of Recreation and Planning Director Roxane Melnyk stated in her report that the Maddogs spring program will operate on alternate fields.
However, the fading daylight hours in the fall means they need to move indoors. Normally, they would set up temporary lighting at the football field, but that isn’t feasible due to the condition it’s in.
She clarified during the May 5 meeting that they will be hosting their games on the field behind the Martensville Sports Centre.
Melnyk said this request applies to the Maddogs’ Pee Wee and Bantam programs, which operate two to three times a week for about three hours per session.
She indicated the Maddogs are anticipating their total rental costs to be about $7,500, but they are only requesting a partial waiver of those costs and will be hosting a bottle drive to offset the remainder.
“Everybody else that comes forward is asking for a full waiver of fees,” she noted.
Incidentally, city council had previously approved a new policy concerning requests for the waiver/reduction of rental fees back in the fall of 2025. This policy established who was eligible for waivers, an application process and defined timelines for submitting requests.
Unfortunately, the timelines presented in the policy could not be met for the 2026 budget year, which is why administration is continuing to bring forward separate rental fee waiver requests for this year only.
In February, six applications requesting rental fee waivers totalling $31,873 were presented to council, followed by another request totalling $3,158.40.
With total rental fee waivers now equalling $35,031.40, this presents an issue, as the operating budget for fee waivers only has $36,000.
Melnyk acknowledged in her report that the Maddogs — which had approximately 60 registered players across four teams in 2025 — addresses “a community need that is not currently being met by any other local organizations.”
As such, administration will attempt to fund the Maddogs’ request utilizing unspent funding from other fee waivers from 2026.
Melnyk explained that sometimes groups asking for waivers don’t end up using the full time requested, “so there’s sometimes money left over from that.”
If the full amount isn’t completely funded by the end of the year, Martensville city administration will fund the outstanding balance of up to $3,531 from the Municipal Contingency Reserve.