Voices heard

This Sunday we held our Community Consultation at Win Gardner (363 McGregor) and we had an awesome turnout. We had 120 residents come out to enjoy food, company and share their opinions, stories, concerns and hopes.

We will be processing all of the feedback and making it available. As the new President of the Residents Association I would like to make it my personal goal that everything we do is transparent and available to all residents. All of our meetings are open to all and we are all here to help, answer any questions, address any concerns and make our Community the best place we can.

We had an hour and a half put aside for gathering information. I will say it over and over again; our Residents Association can do a lot. We can sit around a table, discuss concerns that we have, come up with a neat idea to try and get done, and most times, we will get it done and get it done well. This is great, but, if it is not what our Community wants, we are only doing it for ourselves. The only way we will find out what our Community wants is by asking our Community what it wants.

The online surveys had a great response with over 15 being received. This survey is open year round and will be updated and responses will be worked towards. We had several sheets up on the wall open to anyone that wanted to comment on topics like Recreation, Housing, Newsletters, Gardens and Safety. We had a few responses on these sheets.

We shared food with everyone that was mainly from our neighbourhood. We served bannock from Neechi Foods (325 Dufferin Avenue), pies from The Donut House (500 Selkirk Avenue), chili (made by moi) and cabbage rolls, perogies and perishky were brought in.

We had prizes for the children who were there, prizes for the homes in the area who were entered in our "Winter Wonderland" contest and door prizes. Overall, the event was a great way to meet neighbours and friends, enjoy food and, most of all, to be heard on what is important to you.

Thank you to everyone who came out!