|| = || _ THIS IS WHAT HE SAYS …
Hey Neighbours!
I writing to you from my home office and looking out the window at all this snow and thinking I’m not really ready for this!! I did shovel the walks (twice!) and I hated it because it was the kind of snow that sticks to the shovel. By the way, I’m in a complainy mood because I have covid. Also, how is it that our flowers still have all this colour with all this snow all over them? Is that normal?? Yes, I know - still complainy.
We had our SAHCA Board meeting on Monday. During the standard boring administrative stuff, the financial report presented by Bo, revealed that we’re still operating at a loss. We knew this was going to happen and would continue for a while as COVID pretty much shut down our biggest revenue source (community hall rentals). While we were shutdown, we did take advantage of that downtime to update the facility. With these beautiful new renovations, we are still generating revenue, but we need to start renting out the hall on a more consistent basis if we want to stop losing money.
In the past, we’ve had groups that would meet regularly (weekly, monthly, etc) at the hall with standing hall bookings. Those groups were quite often social groups, but the beauty of a hall our size, is that it can be used for lots of different things:
Lectures/Seminars – I’ve seen financial planners offer up free basic planning sessions as a marketing event to get new clients
Training – we’ve got plenty of tables and chairs to easily set up a training session for up to 25+ students
Parties – birthdays, anniversaries, wedding receptions, etc (**pro tip (and free plug!) >> TeeBreeze Entertainment and SAH resident Jason Kuhn helped us out with the AGM – remember the bouncy castle and the mini golf? These are often features of successful kids parties!)
Game nights
Watching sporting events (World Series, Stanley Cup Playoffs (go Oilers!)) on the big screen (** feel free to invite me if you do this!!)
Jam sessions (**invite me to this too!)
If you’ve got any ideas on how to get more out of this hall (marketing ideas, more revenue ideas, etc), please let us know!!
We also had Ward 7 Councillor Terry Wong in attendance. We had a great discussion focused on our agenda:
City of Calgary funding for community association operations. Councillor Wong will be looking into options for cost sharing some of our operational expenditures.
Concerns regarding the South Shaganappi Local Area Plan. The SSLAP is an ongoing consultation that Liz, Al, and I are participating in and we felt that some issues weren’t being heard. Councillor Wong committed to pass our concerns back to the group and also assured us that this engagement process has been improving
Residential Development Process. It feels like the community’s concerns regarding development applications are not being heard, especially since Councillor has taken office. In the past, we have had an advocate in the Councillor’s office. Since Terry has taken office, he has had some staffing challenges, but has now provided us a contact to fill that role.
Bylaw enforcement. We raised concerns about the effectiveness of the 311 system and the bylaw complaint process. He heard us, but could not provide any resolution or next steps to address these concerns at this time. For us, we just need to keep calling 311 whenever you have a concern (eg lack of snow clearing, lights on and bothering you all night, excessive noise, etc)
UPCOMING Town Hall. We laid out the plan for our upcoming town hall meeting. Councillor Wong will be there to discuss and answer your questions regarding Residential Parking and Residential Zoning. The meeting will be held at the hall on December 5, from 6:30 – 8:30pm. More details to come.
That pretty much sums up our meeting. We also post the minutes of these board meetings online shortly after the meetings (https://www.standrewsheights.ca/executive-committee.html).
We’ve got lots on the go – check the website and Ellen’s eNEWS letter for upcoming events.
Also, if you want to get involved in any of the stuff going on or if you have an idea of something you think the community would like, please reach out to one of us (especially Allison - she’s the nicest one of us – mal@standrewsheights.ca)
In the meantime, if you’ve got any questions or concerns, reach out to the board (https://www.standrewsheights.ca/contact.html) and we can talk about it.
See you around the neighborhood!
Adev
