Submitted by Herta and Eric
Onward and Upward
The Planning and Development Committee has had a month of meetings which have resulted in making strides toward the rehabilitation of our buildings and addressing aging in place.
On Sept 16 the Co-op was provided with CMHC’s approval letter for the Preservation Funding program. Funding is for a maximum amount of $25,000.00. The Board signed the agreement and it was submitted October 1st, 2019.
The Planning and Development Committee met with Jeff Ku and Christina Hopkins from Urban Systems on Sept 23 (see minutes here). Asset Management is an important application to plan for the future of our co-op needs. Urban Systems will be teaching our co-op how to plan for future decision making concerning what gets repaired / replaced, and when and long term financial planning to accommodate our future needs. Up to this time there has no clear directive or culture of long term planning at SHC. For the most part Buildings and Grounds Committees have done the bulk of this work. Planning and Development has provided Urban Systems with a number of important documents (annual budget, current financial statements, 60 year analysis, 2018 Building Condition Assessment, etc.). Urban System’s will spend the next few weeks building out a strong working draft of an Asset Management Program and will present it to the Planning and Development Committee on October 25th.
Urban Systems has also provided us with some important information that we encourage each member to read through. Although “Building Community Resilience Through Asset Management: A HANDBOOK & TOOLKIT FOR ALBERTA MUNICIPALITIES” is designed for cities, the principals will apply to SHC’s future planning.
A meeting with Urban Matters, CMHC and Planning and Development Committee members was held to discuss the issue of accessibility in our units. While no clear decision was made Bob Bott reported that there seem to be some interest in CHMC being flexible about the 20% accessibility rule for funding.
A meeting was also held on Sept 26 with MODA to discuss the first draft of the schematic design. The result of the Accessibility study and a draft of the design for our units was presented at the General Meeting on Sept 27 (see presentation here).