St. Ann's Bay Development Association

Meeting of 6 February 2016

Informal meeting to plan AGM

Present: Loreto Doyle, Ian Green, Angelo Spinazzola, Barbara Weinberg Paul Weinberg, Jitka Zgola

Regrets: Anne-Claude Pépin, Rosie Smith

1. Approval of agenda
2. Informal—no set agenda.
3. Preparation for AGM
   • Speaker
   • Nicole Lucas-Richardson, the County's new Economic Development Officer, has expressed interest in presenting. However, she is away and unable to confirm until next week. Mary Tulle, Director of Destination Cape Breton, was suggested by Ian as an alternative.
   • Action: Jitka will confirm Nicole as soon as she returns.
   • Action: Ian will contact Mary in the event that Nicole is unavailable.
   • Launch of Web Site
   • We will introduce Lisa Finney as the listings coordinator, and ask her to introduce the web site in a short presentation - 10 minutes - to prepare community members to be approached about signing up.
   • By the time of the AGM, much of the content should be in place.
   • We will mention that, due to the strong Internet presence of the well-known St. Ann's Bay in Jamaica, one needs to include Cape Breton or Nova Scotia in search terms when looking for our site, if one is not using the exact URL. In time, as we populate it, our site will start to move up in the rankings.
   • In case the Internet cannot be accessed from the Tea Room, Lisa will prepare some pages to project as slides.
   • Action: Loreto will contact Lisa to confirm her attendance and participation.
   • Roster for Elections
   • We decided that we would aim for 10 board members. It was reinforced that we would not have a larger number to accommodate members who seldom attend meetings. Board members are expected to attend meetings regularly.
   • The primary characteristic we are looking for in a board member is a passion to be engaged in the community.
   • All current board members will re-offer.
   • The following persons were proposed as potential new directors: James Eldridge, Kelly Ingram, Amy MacInnis, Yvonne Megens, Jim Piche, Laura Ratchford, Barbara Weinberg.
   • We will contact these people, and invite those who express an interest to a special meeting on March 15 that will focus on reengaging with the community. We hope that the exercise will be productive of ideas for the AGM roundtable discussions, and will help these invitees to decide whether they would like to join our board.
   • Action: Angelo will call Laura, Kelly, and Amy.
   • Action: Loreto will speak with Yvonne and Jim Piche.
   • Action: Jitka will call Jim Eldridge.
   • Roundtable Discussions
   • Rosie had suggested some kind of exercise to engage attendees in identifying major issues on which SABDA should focus. In order to avoid directing the discussion to a specific end, we agree that a professional facilitator be engaged to guide participants to select areas of importance that can then be discussed in greater detail by subsets of meeting attendees.
   • We agreed to ask Catherine Anne Fuller, with Ian MacNeil as alternate if Catherine Anne cannot accept. We settled on an honourarium of $200 for the facilitator.
   • Action: Paul will contact Catherine Anne, and Ian if necessary.
   • AGM Agenda
   • The following agenda for the evening was finalised:
     • Formal meeting: approve agenda; approve 2015 minutes; receive chair's report, receive financial report; elect new 2-year board; fix date for next AGM; adjourn
     • Keynote address (with Q&A): Economic Development Officer Nicole Lucas-Richardson (20 minutes)
     • Lunch break
     • Introduction of Lisa Finney as web site coordinator (10 minutes)
     • Facilitated roundtable discussions
   • Notice of Meeting
   • To be valid, notice of meeting must be given before February 29. We also want to engage as many community members as possible.
   • Action: Loreto will ensure that a notice is placed in the Events sheet in time to meet the Events sheet deadline (the March Events sheet is delivered in advance of the end of February). She will also ask for a separate electronic "announcement" in late February, and again in late March.
   • Action: Jitka will write an announcement that can be printed on posters for use at venues around the community, including Seniors Lunches.
4. Review of Ruth's and Merrill's Presentations
5. The most powerful message from our last meeting was that SABDA must reengage with the community. In order to move along in that direction it is resolved that:
   • We will ensure that at least 4 open meetings are conducted each year.
   • A contingent of the SABDA board will attend the Victoria County Council meeting on Monday 8 February at 5:00 in Baddeck.
6. Meeting Adjourned 12:30 pm

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