The Cabbagetown Residents Association held its 2015 Annual General Meeting on June 17th, 2015 at Stout Irish Pub. It was wonderful to see so many residents (and friends) out for the event, and we had a terrific time.
Steve de Blois, President since 2013, kicked off the meeting by confirming that we had a quorum and then summarized the history of the association and introduced the board members who had served for the past 12 months (a good looking group if I do say so myself). Steve emphasized that the board had been using the Community Survey completed in late 2013 to guide our efforts during 2014, and using feedback via meeting residents, our website, polls, email and social media to further confirm our direction and gain insights.
Particular focus in 2014 was increasing engagement with our community. This was achieved in a number of ways:
Membership Drive: Simplified
– Moved to annual memberships (no more multi-year memberships)
– Moved to Calendar year membership (vs. 365 day memberships)
– Collect additional household members info (vs. only one person in the household)
– New membership technical platform (free!, less emails, simpler to use)
We now have 513 contacts (16% increase year over year) which includes 304 Members.
Communications:
– Website: The decision to create a mobile-friendly website in late 2013 has proven prudent. 60% of website visitors are using a mobile device. 2014 saw an average of 1865 page views per month.
– Monthly Email Newsletter: Started in November 2013, the monthly email newsletter has increased engagement and of the 487 subscribers, an average of 60%-65% open the email each month and 25% – 35% click on at least one link in the email.
– Twitter: Account continues to grow. 929 Followers, average of 66 tweets per month, 6939 impressions per month.
– Facebook: Account opened in 2014, 123 Likes so far, popular posts reaching as many as 759 people.
Forsythia Festival:
The Forsythia Festival Organizing Committee in 2015 continued to deliver a terrific festival with fun activities, food and beer garden as well as entertainment. The festival happened on May 3rd and continues to be an important neighbourhood Spring tradition bringing the neighbourhood together.
700 Attendees (550 in parade)
90 Volunteers
68 Businesses Sponsored
2nd Annual Pumpkin Walk:
Another community event organised by the CRA and local residents. Scheduled to be held annually on November 1st, the 2nd pumpkin walk held in 2014 saw 90 inspiring creations lined up in Riverdale Park West. Residents also made generous donations of non-perishable food items to Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank.
5th Holiday Card Contest:
The contest was rolled-out to Spruce Court Public School and Winchester Public School in 2014. Students create the designs, and the winning designs are used for our annual holiday cards sent to residents and local businesses.
Cabbagetown T-Shirts:
These popular shirts were reintroduced in 2014 and have proven popular. They can be ordered directly by emailing us at info@cabbagetowner.com or by visiting Spruce.
Financials:
Treasurer Rod Harris then took over the microphone and took us through the financial statements for 2014, and showed that we had kept the course by matching revenues to expenses quite closely. The motion to approve the 2014 financial statements was carried.
New Board of Directors:
We then got to the business of voting on the new slate of candidates being presented as volunteer board members for the 2015-2016 year. In April 2015, the Board appointed a Nominating Committee consisting of two board members, to identify nominee directors for the Association. All nominations were to be deposited with the Nominating Committee by May 25th.
5 new nominations were received and 4 of the 10 directors elected last year agreed to serve again for 2015 – 2016.
Leaving the board after a number of years of service (and with our grateful thanks):
Steve de Blois, Lynn Dionne, Carolyn Shaw-Rimmington, Rod Carr-Harris, Lindsay Matheson, Addy Saeed.
Staying on the board for an additional term:
Phil Frei (President), James Wood (Vice President), Trish Finkelstein (Treasurer), Keith Lawrance.
Joining the board for 2015-2016:
Tyler Fleming, Scott Morrow, Chiara Novak, Marc Simmons, Kelley Teahen (Secretary).
Since the number of candidates nominated fills the vacancies, in accordance with the By-law, Steve asked the Secretary to cast a single ballot for the election of the nominees for their respective terms as set out in the Notice. The Secretary tabled the ballot and Steve declared the candidates duly elected as directors of the Association.
Phil Frei will be President, James Wood will be Vice President, Trish Finkelstein will be Treasurer and Kelley Teahen will be Secretary.
Read the bios of the new board of directors
The meeting was formally adjourned, and the popular “Cabbagetown Bingo” game brought attendees together to learn more about their fellow residents in a fun and creative way while snacks were devoured.
Winning the Cabbagetown Bingo Game were Christina and John Ganev, who took home one of the Cabbagetown Chalkboards created by new board member Tyler Fleming. Congratulations John and Christina!
Here are some more pictures of the evening for you to enjoy. Thank you again for your participation!