A thank you must go out to the many concerned Millrise & surrounding community residents that have started to build some new found energy around rebuilding our community association. The word of our situation has been spread (see news story “Crucial vote at Millrise AGM”) and many concerned people are saying “I didn’t know things were that bad” and “what has to be done to prevent the loss of our rinks?” Well here is an attempt to try and answer some of the key questions on people’s minds. We need to increase our community membership number significantly. We currently only have about 60 paid members out of a possible 1945 family households. That’s only 3%, which is much lower than the average city of Calgary community’s membership of 11%. The rough cost to run the community’s assets (the rinks plus operating expenses) is approximately $700 per month or $8,400 per year. With memberships only costing $20, that would take about 420 memberships just to break even. Well what about all the casino money groups receive? Yes, every two to three years we do get an opportunity to take part in a casino (if we can get volunteers), however, the Alberta Gaming board has very detailed and specific criteria in how those funds are spent. They can not be used for the day to day operating expenses of the association. Those funds need to be handled by your general revenue account, which is made up mostly by membership sales and donations. The next big issue is to have a solid pool of volunteers to help out on the Board of Directors. This doesn’t take a lot of time if the tasks can be spread over many people. Anyway, there are a lot people interested in helping out and we thank you all for just talking about it. We hope to see you at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Oct 24th. See our website for details.