City council approves new Regina exhibition Board of Directors

New board of directors for REAL WATCH: The Regina Exhibition Association has a new board of directors, who will be tasked with finding a permanent CEO.

Regina city council approved a new Board of Directors for the Regina Exhibition Association Ltd. (REAL) at their meeting Wednesday.

Seven people were recommended and approved by executive committee last week.

They are Michael MacNaughton, Kevin Dureau; Kathy Hillman-Weir, Christine Short, Sarah Fedirko, Johnathan Hackshaw, and Jamie Boldt.

The board was passed unanimously with zero discussion on the topic at the meeting.

Four of the board members would have a term of three years while the remaining three members would sit on the board for just two years.

Regina City Manager Niki Anderson, who is currently the interim board chair, would remain on the board of directors in a non-voting director position.

The new board of directors will be in charge of recruiting a permanent CEO for REAL.

Loan request tabled

REAL was also set to bring forward a loan request of $4 million to pay down its line of credit (LOC) at Wednesday’s council meeting.

The item, along with more than a dozen others, were tabled to future meetings.

“Anything that has to do with the financials is a multi-year budgeting question,” Mayor Sandra Masters told reporters following Wednesday’s city council meeting.

“If we [don’t] make a decision, they could do a single year and go back to multi-year,” she added. “There’s things administration needs to work on that need to support the municipal organizations prior to budget.”

The loan request will be before councillors again Oct. 1, 2024.

According to city agenda notes, REAL will reach the maximum approved balance of their $6.8 million LOC in October, so will not have enough cashflow to operate into 2025.

REAL is also required to pay the federal government $8 million in wage subsidies stemming from a 2020 pandemic relief program, which city council had agreed to pay for.

If the $4 million is approved, the money would come in the form of an operating grant from the General Fund Reserve and would be paid before the end of October of this year.

The funding would keep REAL within its maximum LOC limit until March 2025, then will require additional funding in April 2025.