City hall, facing $962K tab for Jets street celebrations, mulls means of paying the playoff party piper

City councillors are considering ways to pay for future Winnipeg Jets playoff parties as the Winnipeg Police Service, Winnipeg Transit and other city departments struggle to absorb part of the tab.

Nine whiteout parties cost a total of nearly $2.2 million, Economic Development Winnipeg disclosed Monday. Winnipeg Jets owner True North Sports & Entertainment covered half the costs, while the mayor's office contributed $120,000 through Economic Development Winnipeg.

The city is grappling with the remaining $962,000 tab, which mostly represents police and transit overtime.

Mynarski Coun. Ross Eadiesaid it's not acceptable to cut services to pay for the parties.

In future playoff years, he said the city could claw back on the entertainment-funding tax rebates it provides to True North, which adds the tax on to all Bell MTS Place ticket sales.

"I don't think they're reporting how much extra entertainment tax did they earn as a result of the Winnipeg Jets being in the playoffs," Eadie said Tuesday at city hall.

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He also said the city could use proceeds from its accommodation tax to pay for future parties, given that hotels benefit from playoff-related business.

Revenue generated by the taxis deposited into the Destination Marketing Reserve.

Point Douglas Coun. Mike Pagtakhan, who chairscouncil's community services committee, said the idea is worth considering.

"We need to talk to the folks at the Destination Marketing Reserve [and] talk to my colleagues," Pagtakhan said. "These are discussions that need to take place."

Mayor Brian Bowman said Winnipeg wouldn't even be having this discussion if Ottawa and the province provided the city with a share of sales tax revenue.

"We don't get that immediate return on investment the way that other levels of government get," referring to the sale of food, alcohol and merchandise related to the Jets' playoff run.

"There wasGSTand PST being collected by all of that economic activity, which was significant."

True North vice-president Kevin Donnelly saidhis organization lost about $600,000 on the street parties.

While True North spent $1.1 million on production costs and a grant to the city, it only netted about $500,000 from the sale of alcohol at the whiteout parties and the collection of a 20 per cent cut of food truck sales, Donnellysaid on Monday.

"In most common occurrences where there is a gathering like that," he said,"the team isn't involved at all and the team doesn't pay anything.

"The example that we looked at isin Nashvilleall the expenses were paid by the visitors' bureau and the city."

Nashville's street parties were much smaller in scale than thosein Winnipeg. The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. spent an average of about $48,000 Cdnon each of its Predators parties, vice-president BonnaJohnson said in a statement.

The average cost of a whiteout party was approximately $241,000.