Eastern Rink Services.
As the name implies, it’s a company specializing in providing services to rinks, something we have two of now with the Ma-Te-Way expansion yielding a second ice pad for community use.
Specifically, it’s a company that paints the ice, as in paints the markings on the ice, the lines, the graphics, the whole deal. If you’ve ever wondered how they get the ice so perfectly marked up in our hockey arenas far and wide, then companies like Eastern Rink Services come into the conversation.
The company came to my interest during the last Renfrew Town Council meeting when a contract came up for painting the markings on the ice at Ma-Te-Way for the 2025-26 season. Shawn Eckford, Recreation Operations Supervisor, had the item tucked into the agenda, the type of decision-making minutia that makes up a large chunk of a council meeting. These things fly past Council all the time, routine matters that often don’t provoke much discussion, just a show of hands and we’ll be on our way. If Council had a drive-thru window, it would be stuff like this that gets done there.
But this was different.
For some reason, and despite the staff recommendation to proceed, the item got carried forward, meaning no decision by Council for at least two weeks when the next regularly scheduled Council meeting is scheduled.
Eastern Rink Services responded to an RFP — Request For Proposal — put out by the Town and, of the three companies making bids, Eastern Rink Services came in with the lowest bid, apparently by a significant margin. If there’s such a thing as a slam-dunk in municipal affairs, this is pretty close to being that. Yet they kicked it down the road before making what, to me anyways, looked like a pro forma decision.
This is the kind of thing that just disappears for a while, and it’s done in such a way as to not draw any unnecessary attention. To that end, the move to have the vote delayed got by me completely, no alarm bells ringing, so I have to give props for the successful sweep under the rug maneuver — SURM — as it was done with the very best of poker faces. Sure, it was a long meeting, and my eyeballs were bleeding, but I still like to think that I at least looked like I was still laser-focussed, but no, they got this one past me no problem.
Not that there’s necessarily a problem, mind you.
Just yesterday, I was combing through last week’s meeting agenda looking for nuggets of anything to write about, because I needed a local piece for Friday. I came upon this item in there, in all honesty having seen it before but passing over it because, well., there was nothing to see there.
Still, for some reason, I just wanted to know why Council would take a momentary pass on such an obvious decision. Nothing crazy mind you, but I was desperate for a story, and here was a thread, and often with this Council and administration, when you pull on a thread, a sweater somewhere comes unravelled.
To the internets I went.
My friends over at Google told me that this company, Eastern Rink Services, had done the ice markings before at Ma-Te-Way, and there was no evidence of any problem with their work. In fact, the online presence for the company showed all sorts of examples of their work at rinks large and small, from the Canadian Tire Centre to local rinks across a broad swath of the province. From the photos, the work appeared to be as good as one can get.
It was interesting how they had done the work at Ma-Te-Way before, but not for the 2024-25 season, with no reason available as to why the town went with a different service provider, Canadian Rink Services, for that year. Yet here they were again, back for another run at the job, taking advantage of a Council that seems to prefer awarding service contracts on a yearly basis rather than for a fixed term. And as far as comebacks go, this time they, ERS, weren’t taking any chances, coming in as the lowest bid by a substantial amount.
That right there was interesting, the difference in the competing quotes. Canadian Rink Services bid for the job again, but apparently had the highest bid, a number I’m not privy to. The second competitor, Wall-2-Wall Ice, had the next highest bid, at $11,052.53. The agenda document says that Eastern came in at $3,436.55 less than Wall-2-Wall, resulting in my calculator telling me that the Eastern bid was $7,615.98.
That’s a 31% discount when comparing the two lowest bids.
Another thing.
According to the agenda document, Council has a by-law obligation to accept the lowest bid on any tender. Should they break with their own self-imposed policy, another by-law would need to be passed to free them from the restraints imposed by the first by-law.
And interestingly, Councillor Andrew Dick made a motion requesting legal advice with respect to any potential ramifications of accepting a bid that wasn’t the lowest one tendered. Seeking legal advice on the possibility of suspending an existing by-law is something I should have noticed right then and there, but it was only after viewing the YouTube livestream that the Councillor’s request came to my attention at all.
So there’s this procedural thing as well. And on top of that, a legal thing? That, friends, is what they call a lot of things.
So why would Council punt this decision down the road, especially with a decisively low bid recommended by staff, and a procedural impediment to choosing anyone other than the lowest bidder?
The two companies bidding the lowest are both local outfits, with Eastern Rink being owned by Spencer Hill and Wall-2-Wall owned by a Jon Wall. I had no idea that Renfrew and area was Ground Zero for two pre-eminent ice-marking services, but apparently there’s something in the water that stirs the creativity of potential ice painters, and whatever that something is, we’ve got lots of it. That means two of the three companies bidding on this contract could be classified as local, whereas the incumbent, Canada Rink Services, is not. So it’s clear Council didn’t balk at the lowest bid because they were attempting to favour a local company in their procurement, since the next lowest bid was from a local outfit as well. Just for the sake of comparison, it might be helpful if the Canada Rink bid was known as well.
Back to the interweb.
I set out to see what I could find out about the two top candidates, although one seriously undercut the other. I don’t know nor have I ever heard of either one, nor have I any previous knowledge of their respective owners, Spencer Hill and Jon Wall.
But ten minutes in to the search, a nugget of some interest came to my attention. It became evident that a gentleman by the name of Kevin Hill happened to be the Secretary-Treasurer of Eastern Rink Services, and has been for over sixteen years according to his LinkedIn profile. Mr. Hill, you may recall, was once the Director of Parks, Recreation and Facilities here in Renfrew from 2013 to 2022, a nine-year period that appears to overlap with his work for Eastern Rink, again according to the LinkedIn page.
Is this the reason for Council’s desire to re-visit the tender and to seek a legal opinion over a matter as simple as changing a by-law, something entirely within their purview to do? Our is it something else completely? Or is it just painting between the lines?
At the very least, it’s an item of interest. And to think it flashed right past me without noticing in the first place.
Gotta bear down more on those Council meetings.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 