Despite a 10 per cent hike in membership fees, the Whitehorse Curling Club lost more money last season.

And membership fees may be on the rise again next season as the local facility looks to return its books to the black, board president Mark Evans told the Star this morning.

Despite cutting costs and running the club as frugally as possible, revenues failed to live up to expectations. The curling club finished the year losing $27,000.

The club has run deficits for the past four seasons, said Evans.

“We made a $20,000 profit five years ago, and since then those traditional sources of revenue have been steadily declining to the point now where we really need to examine how to replace them.”

Creating revenue continues to be a struggle. Both bingo and bar revenues declined again last season.

“It’s becoming a troubling trend,” Evans said. “It seems inevitable that league fees and membership fees likely will have to go up this year just to try and close the gap.”

Despite cutting costs by $16,000 last season, revenues continued to fall.

“It is very frustrating,” Evans said. “While we’re being diligent on one side, we just struggle to maintain revenue. That gap is widening, unfortunately.”

Because of this, the board will face some “very difficult decisions” regarding programming, fee increases and the like.

“As desperate as some of these decisions may seem, if we do nothing the situation will become critical within the next couple of years,” Evans said in his year-end report to members.

“It cannot be overstated the seriousness of the fiscal trend in which we find ourselves.”

And it’s not as simple as having curlers drink more post-game beer in the Eleventh End Lounge.

“We can’t ask people to drink more,” said Evans, noting heightened social awareness has limited the amount of alcohol consumed after league curling games.

“We have to accept that,” he said. “We need to find new and alternate sources of revenue.”

Another issue facing the club is a lack of volunteer leaders.

Despite a membership of 375 strong last season, the board continues to hold three vacancies following last Wednesday’s annual general meeting at the club – including vice-president men, treasurer and director of publicity.

“We really do need some new people to step up with new ideas and fresh thinking,” said Evans.

The newly-elected board consists of Evans, April Williams as vice-president women, Laini Klassen as director of junior programs, Wes Huston as director of membership, Lee Malanchuk as director of ice standards, Tyler Williams as draw master and Bob Smallwood as member at large.

Meanwhile, outgoing members Mike Nugent, Trent Derkatch, Lance Madore and Lorne Diakow were praised for their dedication to the club.

One bright spot for the club came last week via the Yukon government’s Community Development Fund.

The government issued a cheque for nearly $89,000 to the club to install an energy upgrade of outdated, inefficient curling surface lights and to install a separate meter for the ice plant.

“Hopefully that will save us a lot of money on our electricity bills,” said Evans, estimating a full savings of $10,000 each season going forward.

“One of our single largest expenses is utilities. We are trying to do something about this (shortfall). It’s going to take a couple of years, but we have to think about this now before it becomes a real crisis.”