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Meeting of 9 June 2016
Present: Loreto Doyle,
Anne-Claude Pépin, Rosie Smith, Angelo Spinazzola, Yvonne
van der Zanden, Paul Weinberg, Jitka Zgola
Regrets: Ian Green
- Call to order
- Approve agenda as amended (moved: Anne-Claude;
seconded:
Paul; carried.)
- Approve minutes of the meeting of 10 May 2016 as amended
(moved: Anne-Claude;
seconded:
Angelo; carried.)
- Financial Report (Anne-Claude)
- The bank balance at 6 June ws $9,659.82.
- Since then:
- A cheque for $1,000 was given to Lisa Finney as
second scheduled payment for working on enrolling listers for the
community web site
- $26.70 was spent on hospitality, and $60 for Tea
Room rental, for the cruise ship tourism diaglogue and the
Tips for Productive Meetings seminar
Loreto has recently spoken with Tom Wilson, and his department will be
funding the costs of the seminar, $86.70.
- $8,573.12 remains after these expenses. Of this,
$1,745 remains from a grant, and is earmarked for social media marketing.
- Motion: to approve
the financial report as read (moved:
Paul; seconded:
Loreto; carried.)
- Old Business
- Community web site update
- Lisa’s contract is for 125 hours by the end of July,
to enrol businesses in the web site. She thinks these hours will be
needed for businesses, and will not have time for non-profit groups. She
has spent approximately 40 hours so far. Everyone she has contacted
has agreed to take a listing, although they do not all have content
yet. Lisa says she is on track to finish by the end of July.
- Anne-Claude asked her if she might be interested in
working on the web site for additional hours, pending funding. Lisa
indicated she may be interested.
- Angelo has sent Mike Shepherd, the site developer,
a pointed letter regarding outstanding web site issues. Anne-Claude has
started uploading initial content on her own, which was originally
meant to be transferred over from the old site by Mike. A training
session has also not yet been scheduled.
- Anne-Claude has added “Live” as a main menu item,
targeted to people who live or may want to live here.
- Action: By our
next meeting, all board members will have reviewed the web site and
compiled lists of things they like or that need to be changed.
- Action: Rosie will
send Anne-Claude the photos by Vince Forrestall of outdoor activities
in the area, to be added to the site's photo gallery.
- Action: When we are
able to set up a discussion with Mike, we will ask if it is possible to tag
photos with keywords to make them show up in search engines, and also
keep photos uploaded by businesses separate, and not accessable to the
main gallery.
- Facebook update
- There is no button on the web site that directs to the
St Ann’s Community Facebook site. This is one of the items already
on Mike Shepherd’s to-do list.
- Action: Anne-Claude
will follow up with Angelo and make sure the pages are linked properly.
- Business training programme
- Betty MacKenzie, Workplace Education Coordinator for the
Department of Labour and Advanced Education, thought we might have to pay
for future training programmes, but that is not yet the case. She has sent us
several outlines and it is now up to us to decide on a programme we would like
to offer. She has suggested presenting one in conjunction with Baddeck.
Human Resources is a major focus of the available sessions.
- These programmes are large time commitments for
attendees, but have been very useful to past participants.
- We have decided to form a committee to look into
organising another session, targeted and attractive to both employers
and employees. The committee will develop a sales pitch and course
outline for the programme. Jitka, Loreto, and Yvonne will form
the committee.
- Tips for Effective Meetings
seminar and application to SABDA meetings
- There were 18 attendees for the cruise ship meeting,
and 22 for the Tips for Effective Meetings
seminar that we hosted on June 1. Several people attended from
Englishtown. We were not charged by the presenters, so we did not charge
admission for the session.
- Three main pieces of feedback after our previous board
meeting were:
- Commitment:
there is no doubt the board is committed
- Time: everyone
has little time, so meetings need to be short, decisive, effective,
and productive
- E-mails: we
receive many SABDA e-mails, and people have started to grow tired and
may be ignoring them. To help solve this issue, it was agreed to keep
the following in mind:
- E-mails should be kept to a minimum.
- They should only be written if they are
important and if they will make a difference.
- If a topic can wait or requires discussion, it
should be added to the next meeting’s agenda.
- They should be kept short and concise.
- Check the e-mail several times before sending, to
ensure it is complete and correct.
- We should assume that all e-mails are important,
and we should make an effort to reply to the sender.
- Cruise ship passengers
- Jitka received a follow-up e-mail from Bernadette MacNeil,
Marketing Manager at Port of Sydney, encouraging community businesses to
provide a description and promo piece that can be used by tour operators. She
confirmed that the smaller, independent tour operators have greater flexibility,
and may be willing to make accommodations that suit local businesses.
- Angelo has an arrangement with Enterprise Rent-a-Car,
who pick passengers up at the dock, then take them back to their office,
where they are given GPS coordinates that give them directions to North
River Kayak. Angelo says that cruise ships have online forums for passengers
to communicate. This has helped passengers form groups to organise their
own tours.
- Ton Megens of the Dancing Moose suggested to Loreto
that, rather than SABDA coming up with packages, we hire someone to
organise an event for local businesses to get together and brainstorm and
come up with their own ideas. It was discussed, and we decided to try to
organise a familiarisation ("FAM") tour for the small tour operators. They can
then work out a package themselves by discussing with local businesses. We
will write a preliminary letter to local business owners, introducing them to
the idea and asking if they would be interested in having the FAM tour stop at
their business. We will ask Bernadette if she will lead this FAM tour.
- Action: Jitka will consult
with Bernadette on this plan.
- Action: Jitka will draft
the letter to local businesses and circulate it to the board and Bernadette.
- Action: The board will
provide concise feedback.
- Action: Jitka will send
the letter to local businesses, giving them three days from sending date
to respond.
- Community survey
- The survey results should be circulated to the community.
The results will be used as a starting point to kick off our fall projects.
- Action: Jitka will summarise
the results, submit them for review, and circulate them to the community.
- New Business
- Protocol
- Open meetings
- Motion: to declare
all future SABDA meetings open, and to advertise them to the community
(moved:
Angelo; seconded:
Yvonne; carried.)
- Passing of minutes
- The minutes will only be posted after they are
approved by the board at the following meeting. If anything is
changed or context added to the on-line version, they must be
approved by the board at a meeting before being posted.
- Assignment of responsibility for agenda items
- Jitka has started noting responsible board members
alongside their agenda items, so members are prepared to speak on their
topics of responsibility.
- Old papers
- Jitka has a large stack of old SABDA records that must be
dealt with. This topic will be deferred.
- Eco justice
- This item was raised as a possible area of interest to
the community. There being no specific issue or cause brought forward at
this time, the topic will be deferred.
- Support for a Phase II Cabot Trail
Façade, Streetscapes, and Viewscapes project
- A letter in support of this initiative has been submitted
to the Cabot Trail Steering Committee, as part of their application for funding
to ACOA.
- Next Meeting
- Meetings will be adjourned for the summer. Our next
meeting will be in September, date and place to be determined.
- Meeting Adjourned (moved:
Paul; seconded: Anne-Claude)
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