I must say running for office is one of the best community education programs you can enroll in! We knocked on 9,000 doors in our end of town and today I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have a much clearer idea of where I live in our great city and who I share our community with. I also must say running for office is the biggest, most intense volunteer project you will ever take on and I am deeply grateful for the 100-150 volunteers who helped my campaign. If you curious about the results check out the city's website. We garnered 6,063 votes, but it was still 500 votes shy of enough.
My congratulations to Dave Loken for winning a second term and to Hakin Isse and Rob Bernshaw for their campaigns in Ward 3
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| The election is over, now back to work on community issues. |
The best part about running for office, especially for a compulsive community volunteer such as myself, is it represents a fantastic opportunity to make new contacts in cultural, arts, union, business, political and many more communities. I feel like I have a much better idea of who we are as Canadians in our community of communities.
If you are curious what our campaign looked like check out our website at daviddodge.ca and our Facebook page.
My congratulations also go out to the incumbents and new city councillors Scott McKeen, Andrew Knack, Michael Walters, Bev Esslinger, Michael Oshry and Mike Nickel.
Andrew, Bev and Michael have served recently on community league boards with Andrew and Bev having served as presidents. This is quite a different council from a community perspective. I look forward to four years of excellent collaboration with th City of Edmonton and City Council.
EFCL DISTRICT B NEWS:
Leagues Alive - Nov. 16 register now!
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| David Dodge and David Gibbens with now former councillor Kim Krushell at Leagues Alive 2012. |
Don't missing this wonderful opportunity to network and learn at the Leagues Alive Conference on November 16, 2013. See EFCL Leagues Alive webpage.
Here is a list of all of the sessions. Check out a detailed list of sessions in this PDF. As of today there is still room in many of the sessions. There is also a chance to have lunch with your favourite city councillor as well. Don't miss this awesome event.
| 8:45 AM | For the Love of Winter |
| 8:45 AM | Managing Your Assets |
| 8:45 AM | Role of the President |
| 8:45 AM | Role of the Treasurer |
| 8:45 AM | Understand and Utilize Your Website and Social Media |
| 8:45 AM | Working With the City 1 |
| 10:30 AM | AGLC Use of Proceeds |
| 10:30 AM | Board Structure for Smooth Sailing |
| 10:30 AM | Role of the Secretary |
| 10:30 AM | Social Events and Recreational Programs |
| 10:30 AM | Take a Tour! |
| 10:30 AM | The Abundant Community |
| 1:00 PM | Boosting Board Productivity |
| 1:00 PM | Communications, Newsletters, E-News and Facebook |
| 1:00 PM | Conflict Conundrums Detangled! |
| 1:00 PM | Fundraising and Grant Writing |
| 1:00 PM | Park Redevelopment |
| 1:00 PM | Working With The City 2 |
EFCL RGM HIghlights
The RGM was on Oct. 29 You can still get the RGM meeting package (PDF) here!
If you missed the EFCL regular general meeting there are some big changes occurring at the EFCL and news about projects too.
Staff Changes
- The EFCL is pleased to announce that Elaine Solez will be our community planning advisor for the next 11 months. She is filling in for Bev Zubot, who is joining her husband Bob on a sabbatical in Lyon, France;
- The EFCL is also pleased to welcome to its team Amanda Henry, who will be filling the position of Board Development Officer;
- Also Shahriyar Kahn, our Community Development Office is leaving the EFCL for a position with the City of Edmonton.
EFCL Community Development Program
Shahriyar was working on some very good projects for the EFCL including these three:
New Neighbourhood Recreation Model
The city is proposing a new model for delivering sports and recreation programs at the neighbourhood level. The EFCL has met with the city about this, and obviously the community leagues are one of the biggest deliverer of programs at the neighbourhood level. It's not clear year how this will work and whether it will be better than the way it was run in the past. However, being the optimist I sense there may be a tremendous opportunity for community leagues to play new roles. We'll see.
Cultural Inclusion Program
The EFCL is working with the Bredin Institute to connect newcomers with community leagues. This follows on the success of the program we ran a few years ago. Most other levels of government agreed we made tremendous headway in connecting people in cultural and immigrant communities with community leagues when the EFCL was able to hire five part time cultural outreach workers from various communities. This idea was fantastic and it demonstrated very significant potential but has had no funding to hire workers since. My hope is this program will continue to evolve and grow because community leagues have enormous potential here.
Traffic Safety - Can an integrated approach help neighbourhoods slow cars down?
Time and time again when I was running for election I found roads in the communities where people have constant problems with drivers speeding down roads in the community. There are 1,400 collector roads in communities. With the help from the UofA a Traffic Safety Assessment Tool has been developed that would look at statistics to help determine problem areas. This is useful, but I also think new strategies are needed to address the problem where the statistics won't flag a concern, but local residents are experiencing problems. Some community people are actually taking matters into their own hands and putting signs on their own property. (read more in the RGM report).
When you think about these programs and the other reported in the RGM package there are many very positive initiatives underway that demonstrate a very significant potential for community leagues to play new and interesting roles in shaping our communities and our city.
EFCL 100 Anniversary Project News
Also at the general meeting members had an oppportunity to provide input on the 100th Anniversary project that seems to be proceeding nicely. Two concepts have been produced that emphasize different aspects of what we had hoped to do in this community league feature at Hawrelak Park. You can still provide input by filling out the EFCL 100th Anniversary Project Survey at the EFCL 100th Anniversary Project webpage.
