CHESTERMERE – There is about to be a new corporation in town and there are many people from Chestermere and the surrounding area that have been identified as people who have a strong interest in developing our community. The corporation is called the Chestermere Regional Community Development Foundation (CRCDF).
The founding meeting was held on December 5th, 2012 in the New Lodge at Camp Chestermere.
Steve Grande led the meeting and discussed the scope of the corporation. Grande, until recently, was the Chairman of the Community Services Advisory Board and served on that Board for about 7 years.
The Community Services Advisory Board frequently recognized a need to build projects such as senior’s housing, youth facilities, a larger library, health facilities, etc. in Chestermere and realized they needed to start saving money today so these future projects were off to a good start. “The (CRCDF) is essentially a Community Savings Account” says Grande “where money that is contributed can be saved in separate pools for select projects and where donors of these funds are given charitable tax receipts”. A Foundation such as this can function somewhat like a United Way and can maximize time, avoid duplication of projects and contributions and open doors to government grants.
The initial CRCDF meeting introduced the concept and requested the invited members if they would like to be a founding member. Each member will be offered 2 shares; they are free, no dollars are attached to these shares and they are limited to 50 shareholders (100 shares). There is no personal liability attached to these shares, as well, the only responsibility will be for the members to meet once a year in an Annual General Meeting to elect a Board of Directors. Board member elections would be staggered so there is some continuity on the board from year to year. Currently there is a temporary board that is active in order to expedite the legal paperwork necessary to form the Foundation.
The current Board members are Steve Grande, Patrick Bergen, Don Roberts, Stewart Hutchison, Isaac Achal, Christopher Steeves, Alex Halat and Ted Ulmer; a good group of people to jump start this initiative and demonstrate their care in many different ways in the community. An election will be held in April 2013 at the first AGM to establish the new Board, review the CRCDF progress and to provide input on community priorities.
