City wants Hercs to pay bill or they may rent their ice time
Posted By Ernst Kuglin - The Trentonian
Posted 22 hours ago
Barely one month after launching a new name and logo, the Trenton Hercs Jr. A Hockey Club have hit some unexpected turbulence.

A reinvented team hasn’t stopped the bill collector from knocking on the pilot’s cockpit door, in this case team co-owner Brad Teichmann.

The Hercs owe Quinte West $24,000 in unpaid ice rental and dressing room fees from the 2006/2007 season when they were known as the Pack. Upwards of $14,000 of unpaid bill is for ice rentals.

Those unpaid bills date back to Nov.15, 2007. The city hasn’t been paid by the club since.

The city gave the Hercs until the end of April to pay up. That deadline passed and city officials confirmed Monday they haven’t heard from Hercs management.

“We’ve tried to work with the team,’’ said Mayor John Williams. “But we can no longer avoid the bottom line. What do we say to organizations like minor hockey or figure skating who pay their bills and actually need more ice time?”

The mayor said one option the city does have is to start renting out the ice time normally reserved for the Junior A club.

“We’re not trying to be unreasonable,’’ said Williams. “We had hoped the team would have come to us with a plan. But now we have to start booking ice time. We can’t have the building (Community Gardens) sitting empty.”

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Teichmann said the club is asking the city for one more month to pay the bills. He said there are circumstances, beyond the team’s control. Teichmann told The Trentonian “money is not the issue.”

Teichmann said the team lost over $65,000 last year.

http://www.trentonian.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1015989&auth=Ernst+Kuglin+-+The+Trentonian

Just to bring some light to this situation, the facts are far from all there nor are they correct. I will not comment on this any further at this time, except for the statement I have already made.

"Are You Ready To Rumble with the
Trenton Hercs"

I agree with stinger ... lot more to this story. I am sure the Hercs will post a media response to this in the next day or so.

The original post missed half the story (the apparent error/gap near the bottom is theirs, not mine):

“We’re now looking at several new investors,’’ said Teichmann.

Teichmann said directors with the Ontario Provincial Junior A Hockey League informed the club April 29, they were looking at forming a so called new eight-team super division. Currently the league has 35 teams in four divisions, and Teichmann said he doesn’t know how that pending decision will affect his and other teams' bottom line.

“We don’t want to leave the Memorial Gardens. We love the facility,’’ said Teichmann.

Williams said as of Monday the city had not heard from club officials regarding the deadline extension. He added the city reminded the team several times last week that the deadline was rapidly approaching.

“We haven’t received any communication from the team,’’ said Williams. “If they want to get a letter to us by Tuesday’s community and leisure services committee meeting that’s fine. But we will be discussing the situation at the meeting.’’

The team unveiled the new name and logo during a press conference in front of the

Teichmann described the event as a “fresh start.’’

Williams said he suggested to team officials to delay the press conference until the team’s bills were paid.

“How could the city 100 per cent support the team with its new name and logo when the city was still owed the money,’’ said Williams.

In March the city reached a new deal with the team, despite the unpaid bills. That was before the April deadline.

According to the deal, the city would assume the cost of installing rink board advertising at the Gardens and waive the donation/dressing room agreement.

I was pretty disappointed to hear the Mayor of Quinte West on the radio this morning going public with in house issues. I don't think it was at all necessary this early on. Negotiations through the media resolve little.

all due respect dukster IF they did stop paying for ice time in november, less than two months into the season and are now not returning calls to resolve the issue something needed to be done. i agree going public by the mayor is not the path most of us would have chosen.

i have no idea what the issue is but i know managment in the past had an issue over icetime also, rental was from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM if game went into over time and past 10:00 PM to lets say 10:10 the arena wanted the team to pay for the next hour, 10:00 to 11:00. not sure how that was resolved.

i hope they get this cleared up as the last thing this team needs is bad press.

wexdog did you give all these guys a valum, something negative in the paper and people saying they will wait till all the facts come out. LOL

remeber a local papers moto,

NEVER LET THE FACTS STAND IN THE WAY OF A GOOD STORY LOL