Statement Regarding Barrie Today Article
To Barrie Today:
I find the title of Barrie Today’s article “Fair Comment” written by Barry Ward 2 days ago to be of a comical nature. In the words of “fairness”, a reporter should find a topic, such as this one, interview both sides of the dispute, get to the bottom of the issue at hand and then report their findings. Barry made no attempt at all to reach out to myself or anyone else at the Colts Organization to get to the other side of the story. If he had, he would have found out that the disputed amounts he references in his article are exactly that, and that if he spent a little more time thinking about the nearly 30 years that the Colts have been here in the Sadlon Arena and the more than $20,000,000 the Colts have paid in rent and commissions to help underwrite the cost of the facility over this time, Barry would have learned these disputed amounts are small in nature.
The truth is, you based your entire article on one report from one city staff member without verifying any of the facts.
If you bothered to do the work that you should have done you would have realized as well that the Colts had submitted to Sarah MacGregor on July the 17th 2023, a letter requesting abatement for all the things that have been promised to the Colts Organization over the history of the past 10 years lease that had not been done by the city, and I can assure you the amounts owing back to the Colts are far greater than the disputed amounts mentioned in the article.
Barry, you would have also found out that to this date we have not received a response from Sarah regarding any of our claims.
The last point I will make Barry supports my claim that had you done the work and simply interviewed myself, or at least made the effort to call me or anyone else here, I would have explained to you that your “side note” of the Colts Organization for food and drink at Sadlon Arena accepting cash only is an outright blatant lie! We accept debit and credit all over the building, the suites, the lounge and the restaurant all accept debit and credit cards. The only place that we accept cash only is on the concourse at the concessions stands, and the main reason for that is the concessions are not permanent structures, they have to be set up and taken down before and after every event and it is very hard to get power and internet to all of the locations in the concourse. We did try this once Barry, spent thousands of dollars setting it all up but this is an older facility and on game nights or event nights due to the number of people in the building and the bandwidth on the concourse the terminals kept shutting down, which created long lines of unhappy customers, I wish you could be here to see what that looks like. But then again you’ve never been to a game to support the hockey team anyway!
Barry, I am offended by your article. You only reported on one side of a story and did a bad job of even that.
The Colts are a big part of this community and I take great pride in the work that we have done in the community. Our Adopt-a-School program that I started 20 years ago, where we donate $6.00 back from every ticket sold to each school that participates has now reached well over $1,500,000. That money has gone back to help schools buy playground equipment, band equipment, uniforms, smart boards, send kids on school trips, and lots of other things that our local schools require.
Our Golf Tournament, St. Patrick Jersey Auction and our 50/50 draws led to the creation of the Colts Foundation and all the money raised here goes back into the community. The funds raised are well over $2,000,000 since we started, and the beneficiaries of these funds that are much needed are the Food Bank, Easter Seals, Hospice Simcoe, Busby Centre, Alzheimer’s Society, Royal Victoria Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, Gilda’s Club, Cancer Society, Starlight Foundations, Youth Haven, Women and Children’s Shelter and Candlelighters Simcoe, just to name a few.
Our OHL scholarship and development agreement with all of our past players has paid well over $2,500,000 during the same time span for their Post-Secondary school requirements for tuition, books, food and housing. A remarkable program where our past players receive on average one year of schooling for every season they play in the league.
Not to mention Barry that when COVID-19 hit Simcoe County and the past council of which you were a part of needed someone to step up and feed the homeless and produce food for the Busby Centre, the Food Bank, the Women and Children Crisis Centre, and others, the Colts turned our restaurant into a soup kitchen and produced well over 50,000 meals for over 6 months. My staff, my staff’s family, my wife, my kids, and I all took turns and came to the arena 5 days a week to make sure people who needed food were fed, while you probably sat at home sheltering.
Hey Barry, here’s a thought, how about an article about any one of these things I’ve listed above?
If you decide to carry on in this field of journalism, please do the work! Report fairly! Just like the title of your column says! Make an effort to talk to both sides and please, think your stories through rather than just attacking people who are actually trying to do something to help our community out!
I expect you to publish this letter contradicting your misstatements and mischaracterizations and issue an apology to myself and the whole Barrie Colts Organization!
