The Tupper Lake Memorial Civic Center, which is owned and operated by the Tupper Lake Central School District, is seen on Oct. 27. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)

TUPPER LAKE — What’s a civic center worth?

It’s not exactly a straightforward question. There are expenses, there are revenues. There are fixed costs and those, such as unexpected repairs, that come up suddenly. Those are all easy enough to assign a price tag to on a spreadsheet.

What’s harder is to ascertain the value of the Tupper Lake Memorial Civic Center as a community asset — one that sees popular demand and frequent use by Tupper Lakers and visitors throughout the hockey and skating seasons.

During the Tupper Lake Village Board meeting on Monday, May 19, it was a question that Jaycee Welsh hoped to have an answer to by next year. Welsh serves as the superintendent of the Tupper Lake Central School District, which owns and operates the civic center.

Welsh, who frequently attends village board meetings, said TLCSD received an anonymous donation that the school will use to pay for an economic impact study of the civic center. This is expected to be conducted by Saratoga Associates and will not have any additional expense to taxpayers, as the scope of the work is expected to be fully covered by the $11,000 donation.

“They’re going to be doing a study of the civic center to look at the economic impact and sustainability, but also look at the impact that the civic center has on the community and put a value to it,” she said. “Over the next couple of years, we’re going to have a tough budget season and I would like to be able to tell everybody, ‘It doesn’t matter what the civic center loses … (because) this is the value added that it puts in our community.'”

Welsh said the value is reflected not just in its direct economic stimulus, but in secondary savings. For instance, she said the study will examine the extra costs that families spent this past winter traveling to Saranac Lake — the next closest rink — for ice time when the Tupper Lake Memorial Civic Center was temporarily inoperable. This cost could reflect what families would have to pay if Tupper Lake doesn’t have its hometown rink. Welsh said it’s also more than money.

“How late did kids have to (stay up to) do their homework because the only ice time that was available (in Saranac Lake) was from 8 to 9 p.m.?” she said. “They’re going to be looking at that web of circumstances.”

Welsh said this will be important information to have for future budget discussions to help the district and taxpayers evaluate the costs that come with the civic center — as it operates at a net loss — against the benefits it brings to the community, as well as the costs of not having it, including those that Welsh said were not as obvious at first.

“So when someone makes the argument to us in the future, we’re able to say, ‘It doesn’t matter that it loses this amount of money because it’s this valuable, in this amount of dollars, to our community, to our parents (and) to our students.”

Welsh also said Saratoga Associates provides recommendations on how to increase the civic center’s value. Potential options include increasing revenue sources or expanding programming opportunities during the season.

The discussion was prompted by village Trustee Eric Shaheen, who has been critical of past school budgets, citing a lack of transparency. He said it was problematic that taxpayers don’t have a full idea of how much the civic center makes and spends.

“Will there actually be a line item in the budget for the civic center so we can see the revenue coming in and the actual expenditure going out?” he asked. “That was a very critical question last year … and you can’t really tell people that when they have no idea what revenue is coming in (and) where that revenue is going. … It’s a very big item.”

Welsh said she agreed that regardless of people’s opinions of the civic center, they should be able to make that evaluation with the full financial picture. She noted that one of the fixes made to the 2025-26 budget, which was approved by TLCSD voters on May 20, was recoding salary costs at the civic center, which she said weren’t previously included as a line item that reflected their true salary costs. That figure was budgeted as $70,177 in this year’s budget.

Welsh added that for the 2024-25 season, which was abbreviated due to mechanical repairs that had to be made before the rink was operable, revenue at the civic center was about $46,000. She said that would probably be close to the year’s electric bill for the civic center.

“Next year, because we’re going to be open more, we’re looking at about $50,000 in revenue,” she said. “That’s what we’re hoping for.”

While Welsh had these topline figures and believes the salary recoding was progress, she said the district should be able to present a more comprehensive breakdown of the civic center’s expenditure and revenue sources, and would strive to do so in future budget years.

“I should be able to say that to you,” she said. “And my hope is next time … I’ll be able to give you an exact number and an exact breakdown because it’s huge.”

Shaheen said his concerns around the lack of a financial breakdown did not equate to opposition to the civic center’s continued operation by the school district, even if it loses money. In fact, Shaheen said it’s something he supports, even as a staunch fiscal conservative, because of the use and enjoyment it brings to Tupper Lake.

“Regardless if it makes money (or) loses money, that’s one of those things I would support if it loses money,” he said. “It’s a huge, huge asset to this community.”