New developments

Some new developments have been happening on the Glenburn front.  

There have been two formal reports written on behalf of the Glenburn Alumni and presented to the Board.  The first report is an Infrastructure Assessment report.  It describes, in good detail, what would be required, in terms of infrastructure repair and upkeep, to make Glenburn completely up and healthy again.  This includes a review of all the areas of camp and the estimated cost of repair/improvements as well as an estimated timeline for each issue.   The cost, from what I can tell from report, is about 

$200 000.  It was done Jeff Sparkes, an engineer at ADI Limited.  It is an impressive read and is very specific in description of the various areas of camp.  The info on cost and timelines are especially important right now.  

The other report is a Residential Camp Audit Report.  It was done by Keith Publicover and it gives reviews of the various sites that are associated with Glenburn.  It also gives details on the demographics of campers, and the current fiscal reality of camp (whether the place is losing money, as some have implied).

I'm not going to go into all the details of the reports here, I highly recommend reading them yourselves.  Make a not in the comment section of this post if you`re interested in a copy of either or both of these.  I`m going to see if I can make them accessible through a link to download from here but I haven`t done that yet.  

These reports arwere presented to the Y Board (ha, the "why" board) in September 2008.   The authors of the reports were invited to the November 2008 Board meeting.  No significant decisions were made on the future of camp at either of these meetings.  This is likely good news, as they have no real obligation to put things on hold.  This isn't necessarily a result of the work being done on behalf of the alumni.  Head over to Prince Edward Square sometime and see if you think that this is the look of a place ready to make these kinds of decisions.  

So, that's where we are going to have to pitch in soon.  The Alumni is planning some fund-raising aimed at raising $250 000 in the next year.  People need to remember how pissed we all were when we first heard about this and resurrect that sort of energy to make this a success.  It feels as though we were kind of lulled to sleep since the initial opposition to the Task Force report.  We are going to have a chance to act soon so we better step up.  We`re going  to have to start tracking down people from the list on the right and getting some $$.