What to do with the money?

From The Daily News of Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007 . . .

The Kamloops Blazers Sports Society is going to find itself with a whack of cash in the not-too-distant future.
Now it has to decide what to do with all that dough.
“It’s kind of a funny thing to be wondering about,” society president Murray Owen said. “It’s a pretty interesting scenario, to be wondering about what you’re going to do with $6 million or $7 million.”
The society’s membership voted Thursday to sell its WHL franchise, the Kamloops Blazers, to River City Hockey Inc. (RCH).
Led by Vancouver businessman Tom Gaglardi, RCH made an offer to purchase the franchise July 18 and then amended that offer Aug. 22. That amended offer has a “total value to the society of over $7 million.”
Unlike the first offer, the second one hasn’t been posted on RCH’s website, nor was it made available to members at Thursday’s meeting.
The members voted 151-43 in favour of selling the franchise to RCH.
“With that kind of response, there’s no coming back,” Owen said. “We are very appreciative that no matter what happened, it was the membership who decided it and that was their right. Whether we agree with it or not, it is what it is.”
The original offer was valued at $6,100,176 and, as Gaglardi told the meeting, would have netted the society $5,403,000.
Gaglardi also told the meeting the amended offer would provide the society with $6.4 million after closing.
The amended offer “gave it a pretty good bump,” Owen said. “After a review of the amended offer, a lot of the things we felt (would keep us from signing off on it) . . . they removed all of those things.
“It was pretty clear to us how much was added to it.”
Soon will begin the task of deciding how to handle that money, assuming the sale is cleared by the WHL’s board of governors, something that could happen as soon as Oct. 11.
“The society,” Owen said, expaining one possible option, “could become a charitable organization and its intent could be to administrate funds from investments.”
Before any of that happens, however, the society will hold its annual meeting, likely sometime next month.
“Membership will be required to make some decisions,” Owen said, adding that “I’m hoping there will be some dialogue” on what to do with the proceeds of the sale.
“We definitely will go back to our membership and have discussions.”
Owen said there have been preliminary discussions with the Kamloops Blazers Sports Foundation and city officials, but they are nowhere close to making any decisions.
“Some people in town may have some options,” he said. “At this point, nothing has been decided.”
The foundation was set up independent of the society and the hockey team and received a $1.5 million endowment. It has used the earnings from that investment to put more than $1 million back into the community through grants to various organizations.