Meeting Minutes - July 7th, 2015

MINUTES OF MEETING held
Tuesday, July 7th , 2015
33 Mill St, 6th Floor at 6:30 p.m.
Directors Present:

• Phylis Coles (President)
• Claudia Pardo (Secretary)
• Keith Veira (Director at Large)
• Lester Brown (Past President)
• Jose Castillo (Membership Chair & 390 Cherry Street Representative)
• Marien Breen (Representative for 80 Mill Street)
• Ilda Caldwell (Representative for 70 Distillery Ln)
• Parrish Offer, (Director at Large - Communications)
• Sheila Iseman (Treasurer)
• Julie Beddoes (VP External Chair, Development Committee)

Regrets:

• Hamida Hassanzada (Social Committee Chair)
• Salim Jamal (Vice-President)
• Susan Kushneryk
• George Hume (Representative for 39 Parliament)
• Corinne Bryers (70 Mill Street Representative)
• Ken Yim (33 Mill Street Representative)

Guests:
Arella Sohn
1. WELCOME AND APPOINTMENT OF MINUTE TAKER
Phylis Coles, President, called the meeting to order at 6:52 p.m. assumed the Chair. With the consent of the meeting, Claudia Pardo, was appointed Recording Secretary for the meeting.
2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA
A MOTION was made by Julie Beddoes and seconded by Marien Breen to approve the Agenda. MOTION CARRIED.
3. MINUTES OF JUNE 8, 2015 MEETING
A MOTION was made by Claudia Pardo and seconded by Jose Castillo to approve the Minutes of the Meetings held Monday, June 8, 2015 at 70 Mill St, 1st Floor at 6:30 p.m. MOTION CARRIED.
4. REPORTS:
4.1 Treasurer’s Report – Sheila Iseman

• $5,018.34 in the bank
• $3,183 taken out
• $1,274.59 spent excluding Neighbour’s Night Out
• Paid figures for the Neighbour’s Night Out
  • $200 Tickets sold
  • $590 Sales for new memberships that night**
  • $790 in Total
  • **There is a difference of $20 to be investigated.
  • Paid out figures
  • $228.86 for cups, plates, etc.
  • $80.82 reimburse from Costco for unused utensils
  • $394 for Hot Dogs, Veggies, Hamburgers
  • $40 for watermelon
  • $175.39 excess

4.2 Membership Chair’s Report – Jose Castillo

• We’re at 185 members for 2015 + about 40 more for 2016
• On the Listserv: Jose took out all the 2014 members and added the 2015 members and re-sent an invitation for the members to be added to the Listserv.
• Possibility to ask for age to know about the demographics of the Association? It’s illegal to ask for a person’s age.
• Will associate members pay for being a member? We need to decide on a fee for them. It used to be $30. Why would someone who doesn’t live here want to be part of the Association? Julie and Lester say some people who have lived here want to still be part of the Association or have a genuine interest in the Organization. It might be better if we talk about this with our membership to have a better feeling of what people think about this.

4.3 Communications – Parrish Offer/Arella Sohn
District News:
- Arella:

• The whole point of all this exposure is to get people who aren’t committed to the GWNA to have an interest in it and the neighbourhood.
• Arella feels that the core purpose of the GWNA was to get a lot of members who feel strongly about the neigbourhood and support its purpose.
• Julie proposes to send the first paragraph of the Constitution so it forms the core of the discussion and analyze what can be kept or what to change.
• Arella will try for a September 1st edition.

Branding:
- Parrish:
o Brand guidelines:

• First thing noticed is that there’s no standard look. Fonts vary per communication, same with colors. We need brand guidelines.
• Parrish explains what branding is and everything we represent should have a feel and look to it. From a brand we can create a feeling or emotion.

§ Brand elements:
· Logo:

• Created about 14 years ago
• Clear Space, mimimum size, print specifications
• Colour variations (Full colour/Black & White)
• Colour palette: we need to use the proper colour palette

· Font:

• We have 2 primary fonts
• Recommendations are given to maintain a more consistent look

· Photography:

• Outdoor photography should highlight the Distillery District history
• All photography should include people because the GWNA represents the residents of the Distillery.

What’s the purpose of GWNA?

• Our brand should screen what exactly we’re here for. Does the current brand reflect the neighbourhood and what we’re here for?
• We need to be more consistent in or branding so when people see it they automatically recognize it.
• Communication plan: Parrish explains the demographics of the Distillery and why it’s important to know in order to send the right type of communication.

§ Demographics. Statistics presented show the ages of people who live in the Distillery District, excluding 390 Cherry and 70 Distillery Ln

• Population projection. The projected growth for 2023 will be about 3,500
• 867 people in the neighbourhood have a university degree. That’s more than 50% of the population without 390 Cherry and 70 Distillery Ln.
• Predominantly English speaking community

§ 5 main methods of communication we use:

• Newspaper
• Web
• App
• Social Media
• Email

o Social media and web use reduces with age increase
o Newspaper use increases with age increase
General interest by age:

• Social events: interest for younger population
• Discounts: all ages alike
• Local politics
• Interest in community
• Neighbourhood history
• Infrastructure development: becomes of interest with age

Communication Tools:
GWNA website:

• Our website doesn’t reflect who we are and the brand
• Frequency: to be updated every 2 weeks
• Primary target: all demographics
• Cross promotion: should be included on all other mediums that are sent out
• Improvements:
  • Access for each committee to post
  • Provide a guide for posting (picture size etc)

§ District news:

• It’s our newspaper
• Frequency: Once a quarter
• Primary target: 55+
• Cross promotion: Can be sent out through e-newsletter and archived on website
• Improvements:
  • More regularly. Clearer distribution channels to get into people hands.
  • Cross promotion of other services
• Observations:
  • Some sort of paper communication should remain.
  • We need to engage people but not just to increase a number but have some sort of commitment from them.

Social Media:

• Purpose: real time quick updates. Share information but not solely created by GWNA Forum.
• Frequency: once a day
• Primary target: 18-35
• Cross promotion: Place on website and can be integrated into mobile app

List Serve/E-newsletter:

• Purpose: give relevant information in member inbox
• Frequency: once a quarter
• Primary target: 35-55 and 55+
• Cross promotion: can send out formal and informal messages
• Improvement:
  • Should be integrated with the website
  • Create different lists that people can sign up for
  • Archived on the website
  • Better formatting (Mail Chimp)
  • Should all members be able to send a message to everyone?
• Observations:
  • Julie proposes to maybe add protocols for the Listserv. She’s also going to forward the ones that are currently in place.
  • Possibility to filter emails and people to choose what type of emails they want to receive.

GWNA App

• Purpose: Interact with members on their smart phone. Ability or members to share the app.
• Frequency: Once a week
• Comparable medium: App
• Primary Target: 18-24 and 25-34
• Cross promotion: Can send out notifications. Also can be used for promotions for business.

Signage:

• Purpose: A physical message close to entrances welcoming people to our neighbourhood.
• Frequency: Once a year
• Comparable medium: Billboards
• Primary target: New members
• Cross promotion: Can be used to promote anything that we want to while promoting a welcoming environment.
• Observations:
  • What would be its purpose?
  • We might need to revise our vision and mission.
  • How do we start this happening?

· Parrish suggests for the Communications Committee to write recommendations with timelines and the strategies to follow up.
· About the possibility of people being able to sign up over the Internet, what’s happened with that?
o Salim has 2 options for online payment
o Possibility to provide a pre-printed membership online while they get their regular hard-copy card
· First priority should be the website in order to be able to start getting the proper information on it.
o Observation: Branding should be priority and we’ll take it from there.
· Why do we have the GWNA?
o Arella:
§ At the beginning development was the main concern in the area
§ Now there’s a lot of young population that might just want the discounts. Appealing to a larger group of people means giving them a wider range of options
o Lester:
§ He’s received comments on facebook saying “I don’t want my voice filtered”. The GWNA is maybe seen as a group that doesn’t necessarily represent the values of all residents.
- Phylis thanks the board for all the work that’s being done. She congratulates the Development and Communication Committees and all participants. This is indicative that GWNA’s growing.
- As part of the Communications Strategy, Salim presented by email some information in regards online payment and web hosting services. We agreed by email on the host and email cost. Please find here below copy of this email:
From: Salim Jamal 
Sent: July 7, 2015 3:01 PM
To: Parrish Offer
Cc: Phylis Coles
Subject: Updates for the Exec TOnight
Good afternoon Parrish, Phylis,
Thank you both for understanding our last minute regrets at not attending tonight’s meeting.
I would like to provide an update which I would like Parrish to communicate to the board:
Good evening GWNA board members,
Recently, we, as a board have been looking towards the future of our Association from a communications standpoint. Our neighbourhood has been growing at a rapid rate, and with even more residential developments completing year-over-year, the next 5 years will be a time of unprecedented growth and opportunity for the GWNA.
Looking at our membership numbers as a percentage of the overall population in the Distillery, we are in a position where our membership must expand to make positive changes and become a stronger representative body for our residents.
The communications portfolio have been looking at a unified strategy to restructure our print, web, social media and digital communications. To this effect, we have already made some changes to our core digital offering.
Our Brand: GWNA.CA - our presence on the internet is as important as our presence in person and as such, we need to secure our brand moving forward. As of July 6th 2015, we have taken two steps: The first is moving our domain name to a standalone Canadian Registrar (NamesPro Canada). This protects our control and ownership of our intellectual property and decouples us from our hosting service provider. What this means is that we can manage this asset individually, as we would any other intellectual property asset. The second, is that we have completed a transaction to secure our ownership of the GWNA.CAdomain name until the year 2021. We have gone through painstaking processes to acquire this name and do not want to risk losing this important branding component. The total cost for the renewal and extension of our domain name ownership is $10.37 + $67.62 = $77.99
Our Web Hosting Services: When we originally created our GWNA website, our needs were simple and restricted to the essentials. Now that three years have passed since we have first hosted our site, we have a much more accurate assessment of our needs. Points for consideration were Speed, Reliability, Canadian Data Centres (privacy concerns), Storage space and type as well as manageable pricing. In considering all these factors, combined with an analysis of the next three years of our digital needs, we have selected CrocWeb as our preferred vendor to host our website. They are a Canadian hosting company, with a 6 year track-record of speed,r liability and service resolution. Their data centres are hosted in Montreal, QC and the have provided a 60% discount on their services. The package we have selected offers 50GB of storage (we currently use 2.4GB), 5000GB of data transfer (our current needs are a fraction of this on average) along with many other features which we will need moving forward. The cost of service for three years is $100.08 USD. We believe this to be a low risk at this price point.
Online payments are another area where we will be expanding our offering. Thus will require merchant processing services, of which we have considered both PayPal and Stripe. To support this on our website and any other digital offering, we would need to add a secure identity certificate to ensure our users are comfortable in transmitting their account details. These certificates cost between 20 - 100 USD per year. We will be testing the secure processing using a 90-day certificate provided to us at no cost.
I firmly believe that these changes are just small steps a properly moving our new communications strategy forward. These changes will also allow us to bring improvements to membership management, branding and social media efforts in the coming weeks and months.
Best regards,
Salim
A MOTION to agree on the website host service and domain fees, was presented by Keith Veira, Parrish Offer seconded. All in favour.
In regards to alternative membership payments through PAYPAL and STRIPE, we might not be ready to make a decision right now about the online payment options.
Phylis asks for a backup for the membership chair in case Jose Castillo goes on vacation. Ilda Caldwell will serve as backup as she already knows how the system works.
4.4 Development Committee – Julie Beddoes, Keith Veira
Revised report to GWNA board meetings of 7 July, 2015.
1. Conduct of committee: It is not feasible to have a regular monthly meeting date for the committee; meetings will be called as issues arise and members are available. Members will attempt to attend West Don Lands Committee meetings.
2 Application from Cityscape for the ribbon building and a new building on the triangle site: Developer was asked to submit a new application.
Comment from Tom Davidson: City Planning and the applicants have met and discussed the issues raised during the public consultation. No firm recommendations have come out of that work, but there are more perspectives on how to proceed. We are recommending that we reconvene a working group format session with the GWNA and building representatives to discuss the issue. We'll consult with GWNA on how to organize that later in the summer.
3. Mill St. refurbishing: Working group, mainly City staff, will meet in July. Jane Robinson and Phylis Coles are on list to be invited. Gobnait McAnoy, who lives in 70 Mill St., will also attend.
4. Lower Don River and the Port Lands Jane Robinson will continue as GWNA rep onPort Lands issues with Julie Beddoes as alternate. SAC meeting on Villiers is imminent.
5. Future of the Gardiner East EA: CodeBlueTOand West Don Lands Committeewill continue to be active on this and will meet soon with First Gulf about their attitude. City staff are working on further requests for studies; will report to PWIC in September. Province may decide Council decision is contrary to terms of reference of the EA. Report of Council decisions is at http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2015.PW4.1
The staff report to the September PWIC meeting will probably not appear until a few days before the meeting. Does the GWNA board agree that we should depute in response, most likely in support of the “take-down/boulevard” option?
6. Island Airport Runway Extension EA: Terms of reference stage of study is complete. Draft report on work to that date will go to Council in the fall. It is expected that the final report will go to Council in spring 2016.
7. First Parliament Working Group: Lester and Gobnait are GWNA reps. Not clear at this stage how 4-year lease on car dealership will affect construction time lines for library building.
Tom Davidson adds: The Environmental Assessment work by the consultants has been completed. Our office is organizing a working group meeting to review the results of this work and update on the timelines for a workplan, and beginning a Master Plan process. We are prepared to hold a meeting in Mid August, otherwise it would have to be in mid September. We'll advise you shortly on this after we talk a bit more.
8. Relief Line: TTC has presented on this to the GWNA May meeting and covered technical and route issues. Keith twice forwarded link to consultation site to GWNA listserv so that members may express their opinion.
Date of next SAC meeting TBA. Report should go to Council in December 2015 or early 2016.
9. Aitken Place Park: George Hume is GWNA representative on the stakeholder committee and will post final design when available.
10. Development on Unilever site: Development on Unilever site: Jane Robinson attended public meeting which was looking for input on public realm, public amenities, sustainability and connections. CodeBlueTO and WDLC will meet with First Gulf re Gardiner East.
11. City Long-Term Waste Management Strategy Update#4 report distributed on Listserv June 25th 2015.
Keith attended SAC meeting on June 25th to evaluate criteria for the proposed program and facilities.
Only one back up allowed and acknowledged (Gobnait).
Report was distributed to all board members, awaiting webmaster to post on GWNA website. No further SAG meetings expected during the summer, possibly late 2015.
12. Toronto Core planning meeting Gobnait will be GWNA delegate to this exercise.
Report was distributed to all board members, awaiting webmaster to post on GWNA website. No further SAC meetings expected during the summer, possibly late 2015.
City of Toronto engages public in its downtown study, ‘TOcore’
13. Data Centre Committee does not see need for any continuing liaison with centre management but would like information re emergency measures. Will ask Tom for info.
14. Lower Yonge Precinct Plan: Julie Beddoes is GWNA rep on SAC. Ahead of completion of plan, Pinnacle developments are going to OMB to ask for much taller buildings than plan would allow. Julie will talk to Willie Macrae about this site and report later in month. Otherwise much to like about the plan.
15. New Item from Keith: Keith proposes “we start a focus project on carbon reduction to improve waste diversion, recycling and potential (identified) cost savings for The Distillery District merchants and residents. Started initial discussion with 70DL condo board president.
More discussions pending.” Development committee suggests this be referred to whole board rather than to committee.
New issues
16. Waterfront Srategic Review:
www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2015/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-81763.pdf
On recommendation of Development Committee, GWNA send letter in support of staff recommendations to Executive Committee. Committee adopted report and asked for review of financial operations of Waterfront Toronto.
17. Ward and provincial riding boundaries: Further consultations to be held in fall. Members urged to participate. Some danger of our area being split as for federal ridings.
Points to highlight:
Someone asked the board to get a regular meeting date. Everyone said it’s hard to find a regular date.
The new people that have come to the Development Committee are taking over the new issues that arise but Julie and Jane remain in the loop.
Julie might step out from the Chair but will remain in the Development Committee. The most important aspect is being able to attend the West Don Lands meetings as they touch a lot of what’s going on in the area, which includes our neighbourhood.
4.6 Social Committe – Phylis Coles for Hamida Hassanzada
- Movie night:

• The only place where it would be possible to hold it would be on Gristmill. However 39 Parliament residents seem to be sensitive to noise.
• Should it be outside? Can it be inside? Options to explore: The Y, Fermenting Cellar?

- Garage sale:

• Possibly it will be on May 14th, 2016
• We’ll have to contact them at the beginning of the year

- Halloween party:

• Gathering ideas

- Christmas party:

• Still gathering ideas as well

- Guest speakers for future meetings:

• John Campbell, CEO of Waterfront Toronto. Julie will find out when he can attend.
• Soul Pepper
• Sarah Beldrick from the Y
• Arella proposes to have a more balanced meeting that attracts attention from a wider audience. Keep topics related to the neighbourhood but also something lighter. Inviting people from business at the Distillery for example (Pikto?).
• Maybe Pam McConnell for September
• Phylis encourages the Board members to think about possible speakers for our meetings in different areas.

11. Next Meeting:
Monday, July 13th 2015 at 6:30PM at 39 Parliament St, 11th floor.
12. Meeting Closed
Meeting closed at 9:30 p.m.
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