Owatonna Express president clears the air on Owatonna

OWATONNA — Bill Stewart has heard every question, and he’s ready to clear some things up.

Stewart, the president of the Owatonna Express’ seven-member board of directors, has lead the local group to bring a Junior A hockey team back to Owatonna ever since the Southern Minnesota Express announced they were leaving town in March.

The ensuing four months have been a rollercoaster for the Owatonna businessman, who sells lumber out of a downtown office when he’s not staying up late nights trying to organize an expansion hockey team.

The questions have come from every angle and they’ve covered every topic. Tickets, rosters, camps, schedules, money and coaches have all been hot items in the Owatonna hockey community this summer.

The biggest question Stewart has faced is as simple as the answer is complicated: What do I get if invest money in this team?

First of all, Stewart has one thing to clear up.

“We have NO investors, in big capital letters,” he said Tuesday. “We only have contributors.”

The original plan to build a new team in Owatonna included investors and a stock plan, similar to what the Green Bay Packers have been running for nearly 100 years. But for many reasons, that’s not how things turned out in Owatonna.

Instead, the Express is considered a 501(c)(3), or non-profit, organization. Therefore, all money given to the team is a tax-deductible contribution, not an investment.

There are many benefits to contributing to the team. Members, as Stewart calls every contributor, have the right to elect board members and vote on items at the annual meetings.

In addition, Stewart said the club is working on other ways to recognize contributors, including memorabilia gifts and a cookout or banquet with the players.

“The bottom line on this thing is that we are all partners here,” Stewart said. “I think there is a perception on this that there are people that have agendas. I don’t have a thing. I don’t own this. Nobody owns this. I have nothing to gain.”

Then why go through all the hassle of building a team from scratch?

“For the love of the program,” Stewart said. “That’s the honest truth. When we found out this team was leaving last year, we all went, ‘Wait a minute, this can’t happen.’ I’ve had a lot of fun with this.”

Stewart and the other six members on the board of directors are all unpaid volunteers, and they will remain that way unless the team makes a substantial profit. In that case, they could earn a small director’s fee, but Stewart said that would be minimal.

“We only have three paid employees, and that is [sales director] Kyle [Berding] and the two coaches [Pat Cullen and Eric Fink],” Stewart said. “And then we have a pile of volunteers. Even Rick [Kolz], our acting general manager, is an unpaid volunteer. We’ve had a very positive response to all this from the community and it’s been great so far.”

Another popular question Stewart has heard is much more simple: Do contributors get free anything? The answer is also simple: No.

“There are no freebies,” Stewart said. “This isn’t last year. We can’t afford to do that. We would love to fill the seats for every game, but if we fill them with free tickets, we won’t be here very long. We’ve lowered the prices from last year, but they’re not free.”

The same goes for merchandise, concessions and everything else.

Incidentally, purchasing anything from the team is not a way to gain a tax benefit. Stewart said anything purchased, including tickets and merchandise, do not count as tax writeoffs because you receive something in return.

“However, if you just came up and gave us a hundred bucks because you like us, well that could be a writeoff,” he said with a laugh.

As the season gets closer and closer — opening day is less than seven weeks away — laughs and smiles are becoming more prevalent. The hardest part of starting a new team is pretty much over. There are still a few key steps left, but the players are picked, the tickets are for sale and the ice time is booked.

Now it’s just time to play hockey, no questions asked.

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