Business Meeting and Special General Meeting - at the College

We had a pretty good attendance on Thursday for what proved to be a busy evening. We welcomed as our guest Len Nieuwenhuis , the chairman of District Foundation committee. 

Kathryn started the meeting by saying grace and later on raised fines including a very cheeky one from me, having been described as dressed an extra from 'Brokeback Mountain'!

We had few announcements during the meal as most things were dealt with in the SGM and subsequent Business meeting.

Firstly to the SGM. Richard was elected as Vice President for 2016/17 and Jan Dear was elected as Junior VP. My thanks and best wishes to both of them.

John J and Sheila were confirmed as Secretary and Treasurer for 2016/71; again thanks and congratulations to them both. We also formally adopted the accounts for 2014/15.

During the Business meeting, we covered quite a few things and I need to apologise that it was conducted very rapidly with me allowing little or no time for debate; sorry, but I knew we had to get through the business and then hear our presentation. Chris, substituting as secretary in the absence of Sect John, will idc prepare minutes for members so I won't go through all of it here. 

After completing the 'business' parts of the evening we moved on to a presentation by Len which attempted to explain what Foundation is all about. He had expected to do his presentation with visual aids but due to a mix up we had no equipment available. Initially he was unwilling to proceed but eventually decided to press on. Having tried unsuccessfully to grasp Foundation I found the talk quite useful - possibly because it was basic and didn't have the depth of detail that I suspect his full presentation would have delivered. I have emailed to thank him and apologised for the mix up; he has asked to come back to do the full version!. Roger gave a vote of thanks and Leila won the raffle. 

Next week we again at college for the xmas party -the suggestion is to dress festively so dig out those awful jumpers etc.

Since our meeting on Thursday I have heard from Graham Furnival that Rotary have a shop in Chelmsford for the week beginning 22 Feb.That ties in well with World Rotary day on 23 Feb. I have also met with Dave Almond from Mildmay and we hope to progress the Chelmsford Community Radio idea .We hope that our first week on the radio will be on 21 Feb. Joint Presidents will be discussing what we might do/organise in the shop week but in the meantime can those of you who are not working please make a note of the date as we will need 'staffing'.