Submitted by Helen Wirrell on behalf of the Board
Firstly, we’d like to welcome our new Board Member, Sarah Reimer – thanks for stepping into this new challenge, Sarah.
Policy Reviews
Over the summer, a subgroup of Board members reviewed the Buildings Committee’s policies. The revised document will be returned to Buildings for their feedback and should soon be available to present to the membership for review and approval.
General Meetings
The next will be held January 26th (Australia Day) – we will send out further details closer to this date. Following feedback from the last GM, Phil Cox will be bringing a projector to future meetings so that when items such as policy revisions, are being discussed, members will be able to view them more easily.
NOTE: if you have already indicated that you want to receive all SHC office notifications via email, all GM paperwork (i.e. agenda, budget info) for an upcoming meeting will be sent to you by email. You won’t be receiving paper copies.
General Business
- Motion Sensors ~ will be installed when the weather improves.
- New Contractor ~ The Board is reviewing the process of hiring co-op staff and ensuring this meets co-op policies, including the Board’s responsibilities for overseeing contracts and terms of work.
- Annual Inspections ~ have been completed for 2017.
- Finances ~ the SHC term deposit is not being renewed due to the very low interest rates being offered. The Board and Finance are currently looking for more competitive rates.
- SACHA (Southern Alberta Co-operatives Association) ~ has asked if Sunnyhill would be interested in hosting the SACHA 2018 city-wide Board course. This would take place on a Saturday in late January or during February. Providing we can get space at the Calgary Curling Club, we think this would be a great opportunity in terms of making this excellent course convenient for our members to attend.
- Smoking in Units ~ as various members have expressed a concern regarding smoking in units, the Board has been exploring various resources and ideas, and has found the following website provided by the Canadian Cancer Society ~ http://smokefreehousingab.ca/ . This website can help us “learn ways to implement smoking policies in [our] co-op”. With the upcoming legalisation of marijuana usage, we feel it particularly important to start this discussion in an informed way. so please review the website if you find this an area of concern.
- Andrea’s holidays ~ Andrea will be on vacation from December 20th to January 5th. SACHA will be supplying a replacement office co-ordinator for this time period.
- New Members ~ one of the areas we identified as a concern during our retreat a few months ago was how to help new members feel engaged in the co-op. One idea discussed was having individual Board members ‘adopt’ new members and offer to accompany them to various co-op events such as General Meetings. We will start doing this for our next big event – the annual Christmas party
Christmas party – will be held December 9th!!
Our next Board meeting will be held December 6th.