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“We are on our way to bankruptcy,” says Senlac Café board

Lost documentation and high inflation costs leave the current Senlac Café board in a state of emergency.
zsenlac-cafe
Senlac Café

SENLAC — A public meeting was held by the Senlac Café board on July 3, with some major concerns on the table. The board includes Shane Forbes, president; Jordan Wildeman, vice-president; Chantell Manchester, treasurer; and Chantel Moncrieff, secretary.

With close to 40 members of the community in attendance, the board members were not going to sugar-coat or mince words regarding the difficulties they’ve been encountering for the past two years.

Wildeman explained to the crowd that the current board was having difficulty determining how things were originally set up. From the information the board was able to gather, 78 shareholders established the board; however, the documents showing who the original shareholders were, and the cost of the shares, are nowhere to be found.

“We have asked for the last two general public meetings, as shareholders and anybody who can honestly give us the paperwork. At the very beginning of this, when we would have become a co-operative board, we would have had a stamped notary to show the shares that were given and the amount that was received. If it isn’t stamped by a notary, it means nothing,” said Wildeman during the meeting.

She continued discussing the financial statement, dated August 2024 to May 2025, as the last two months of statements have not been received. The building — which houses the post office, a gym and the café — had a tenant who had been running the café as a business. The monthly rent for the café was $210, giving the board a projected revenue of $2,520 for the year, with an additional $1,800 annually from Canada Post for rent and $1,457 through a government grant towards the gym. With a donation of $619 and $97 of earned interest, the board netted $5,277.15 in revenue — short of the expected $6,500.

In the expense column, insurance and utilities consumed much of the board's savings. More than $3,500 was paid out to both SaskEnergy and SaskPower, and close to $1,500 went into repairs and maintenance of the building. At the bottom line, the board’s expenses totalled $13,300, leaving them in a deficit of $8,023.

While the board continues to fundraise to keep the café afloat with their annual bunnock tournament, the rising costs of utilities and building materials continue to siphon funds. In an effort to help offset these costs, the board reached out to the tenant to discuss increasing the monthly rent to $500. The tenant — whom the board did not name — took to social media to say the business would cease operations on July 1, citing “The café board has decided to just shy of triple the rent here.”

“The backlash that’s happened is really unfortunate and I realize the majority of the people here have no idea what I’m talking about, but the backlash we received was very unnecessary. We came from a place of wanting to help, wanting to be a part of this community. We did not come from a place of hatred, of hurt, of wanting anybody gone, that was not our place,” said Wildeman.

By the end of the meeting, many community members were in favour of the board returning to an “honour system” coffee shop, where the doors will be unlocked during the same hours as the post office. This will allow members of the community to still have the opportunity to socialize locally, without the higher costs of running a full restaurant. Forbes said the tenant is in the process of vacating the building and added that he would notify the community when the café returns to its previous “honour system” operations.

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