Your neighbourhood association (Shorewood/San Pareil Owners and Residents Association [SSPORA]) urgently needs increased membership!
Your association, through its volunteer Board, is working hard on issues affecting the quality of life and strength of social community within our neighbourhood such as: our own community parks (Maple Lane Park and San Malo Park); emergency preparedness; the improvement of the intersection between Plummer Road and Highway 19A; the proposed cycling/pedestrian linkage between Rathtrevor Provincial Park and Parksville Community Park.
Ours has historically been a “shoestring” organization, with a slender budget supported entirely through memberships. We have consistently used that small budget to support neighbourhood activities such as the annual Easter Egg Hunt at Maple Lane Park. Our annual membership has typically run in the 40’s.
We are now striving to do much better than this. We have taken the big step of developing this association website where you can get authoritative, up to date information about many issues facing our community. The digital infrastructure we have set up this year (this website plus underlying email support) will present us with ongoing maintenance costs. We have developed a vision for increased activities at Maple Lane Park – sporting events, music, art. This park needs equipment improvements of various types – increased bench seating, picnic tables, an onsite storage facility, an open air shelter, and a sports court for basketball. These are big dreams. We are attempting to obtain increased funding through the RDN Recreation and Parks department (a current Director sits on the regional Parks and Open Spaces Advisory Committee (POSAC)) and writing community grants.
However we believe that our own community can and should do much more toward the support of association activities. Since the inauguration of our website we have obtained new memberships numbering in the high 30’s. This is below our historic yearly average. Honestly, for a neighbourhood of ~330 properties, with a population of perhaps 500 to 700 adults, this is rather poor. At the beginning of this year’s Board work season (our September meeting) the Board projected what would be a minimum annual association membership necessary to raise us from the “hand to mouth” stage toward a more robust and effective organization – we arrived at the estimate of 65 memberships.
However we believe that we can do even better than that. We are therefore calling on our community – help us reach 100 memberships this year! Help move us to the point where we can really invest back into the community in cost-effective yet substantive ways. Please recall that the Directors on your association Board are all volunteers. All of your membership dues go directly into the support of our digital infrastructure and community activities.
Want to join? Find out how at the “Become a Member/Donate” section of this website.
Let’s move forward – let’s gather 100 Members together!
