Eston’s Wheatland Plus 50 Club sends appeal to provincial government

BY JOAN JANZEN
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

The Wheatland Plus 50 Club has been in operation in Eston, SK since the 1970’s. That’s a long time for a non-profit charity to be continuously providing services to a community, but this particular club has done just that.

Those services included flu clinics, diabetic clinics, Alzheimer’s seminars, and the club also offered a place for seniors to get together and visit. Fellowship and hospitality is an integral part of the club.

The club acquired a substantial portion of their revenue by renting their facility, located at 130 - 1st Avenue West, for wedding receptions, birthdays and other events. This continued use of the building propelled the members to spend quite a sum of money during the last several years upgrading the plant so it would be more energy efficient.

This work was done based on financial projections of reasonable future revenues.

Their membership of 60 seniors has managed to run at a small surplus each year until recently; then Covid-19 struck and all activity ceased. Since then the club has been allowed to hold activities with a limit of 30 people in the building. However, Ralph Meisner, who has been the club’s treasurer for the past two years, explained, “Our largest loss of revenue so far has been not being able to rent the building.”

The loss of revenue began March 1st, and Ralph observed, “Even if we could fully open today, we would still not be able to make up for the lost revenue that we have experienced.”

While revenue stopped pouring in, the club’s operational expenses continued to pile up. Meisner gave a run down of the costs, “We have expenses each month to cover utilities such as power, natural gas, telephone and water and sewer. We have current bills for accounting and property taxes, and insurance renewal due by Dec. 31, 2020.”

The club’s predicament caused treasurer Ralph Meisner to write to the Hon. Warren Kaeding, Minister of Senior Affairs, in an appeal to the Province of Saskatchewan for financial help during this crisis. Meisner emphasized that future months without revenue will certainly cause more stress on the club’s financial situation.

“We face the very real possibility of not being able to continue beyond the end of December, 2020,” Meisner penned in his letter.

It would be a tragedy for this non-profit organization, that has thrived for nearly fifty years, to be forced to close through no fault of their own. Many more senior clubs are likely finding themselves in financial situations similar to that of Wheatland Plus 50 Club in Eston, and are looking for solutions that will enable them to move forward.