Mayor excited to see new rink funded without taxpayer dollars

May 20, 2026, 8:55 am
Ashley Bochek, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Rendering of the new rink being built in Moosomin later this year.

Moosomin Mayor Murray Gray says he is excited to see the new rink project funded without raising taxes for the community.

“It’s really exciting because once the foundation is set up, it will help us be able to get the things for our community that maybe we can’t afford to buy with taxpayers’ money because it’s hard enough to operate a community off of what you charge for taxes, or you’d have to raise them in order to be able to have nice things like a second arena.

“The fact that it’s a foundation—it’s not money that’s just spent and gone, it’s for the future of the community because the money will always be there to earn interest and use the interest in order to make Moosomin and area, a better place to live. It is very exciting stuff.”

Gray says projects such as a new rink would otherwise mean raising tax dollars to afford building bigger projects around the community.

“If Council determined that we needed to build a second arena, and something like the foundation wasn’t happening, we would have to increase our taxes by a great amount in order to pay for the capital cost, even if you did get a grant for it. So it gives us the ability to add the things we need in order to grow without putting it directly onto the tax bill, which makes it a less of a burden for the taxpayers of the community. The payback on that—anything you can add to the town brings more people into the community, which makes our businesses more lucrative to operate. There’s huge benefits that way. The payback would be to the business community.”

He explains the new arena will allow sports clubs to grow and host more tournaments bringing more tourism and dollars to town.

“Our figure skating club has been growing, and our minor hockey has been growing with the addition of several female teams, the Junior B team coming to town, so ice time is pretty tight, as far as even being able to run enough tournaments. I think that’s probably the biggest advantage is we can continue to add those teams with two arenas. You could host a large tournament, which would definitely benefit our hotels and our restaurants. Rec Director Mike Schwean will tell you that the payback on­ tourism for sports is huge. The amount of dollars that come in just from one tournament—an example is the dance competition a couple of weeks ago—brought a lot of people to town and they spend money when they come. It is huge going forward from a tourism standpoint. The new arena gives us more options for tournaments and for people to come to town to play hockey or to watch hockey, or to be involved in figure skating. It’s just going to bring more people to town throughout the entire winter.”

Gray says the community working together toward a common goal of growing Moosomin is something as mayor, he is proud of.

“It’s definitely the feeling of pride when you see how co-operation and working toward a common goal can work and how it can benefit everybody in the community.

“It’s humbling to think as mayor that really there isn’t anything we can’t do. It seems no matter what it is we need, when we all work together, we can accomplish so much. So it is really exciting. Before this announcement, or before we talked about this, I already believed wholeheartedly that the future was very bright for our community and this is fast tracking us that much more to do greater things.”

Gray says community leaders are motivated in moving this project quickly.

“There’s definitely some movers and shakers in our community. I sit on the committee that’s planning it, and there’s people that know that it’s a need of the community and are motivated to get it done. That’s super exciting. In order to have an idea, plan it, move forward, and to actually be in bricks and mortar so quickly is awesome. It’s really, really great to see.”

Mayor Gray explains the community’s donations will go toward capital costs of the new arena.

“Donations will pay for the capital cost of the arena, and they would lease the arena back to the town for $1. We would then operate it as we do with Mike Schwean Arena.

He adds, “As a resident of Moosomin, to think that these exciting things can happen—20 years down the road, when we look back at it, I think this will be seen as a turning point on how we took the next step forward in growing our community.”