Large turnout out and Q&A period at 2018 Annual General Meeting
Our 2018 Annual General Meeting took place this past Wednesday evening, with speakers from the province and city bringing us up to speed on the status of upstream and local mitigation efforts.
CRCAG board member Greg Johnson headed up the evening, welcoming everyone and giving thanks to the elected officials in attendance (thanks to Minster Brian Mason, Jeromy Farkas and Greg Clark).
Tony Morris followed with the co-president’s message saying that “As a community we have achieved great things but there is still much to be done. Although it may be hard, it is important to acknowledge the anniversary. We chose to have the event on this date for that purpose.” You can see a few more of his quotes in the tweets we posted during the event.
As the saying goes ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and flood-impacted resident Steve Allen’s video After the Flood – Our Journey truly exemplifies that. No measure of eloquence can match its message. We played this video, along with a few others (looped as people filtered into the venue), linked here:
- Raw Aerial Footage of Calgary, Alberta Flooding – June 21, 2013
- Calgary Floods 2013 21 June Bow River Downtown Center Street and NW Bowmont Park flood flooding
- Calgary Flood June 21, 2013 – Video of Bowness
We expanded our team this year, adding two committees to execute specific work, so introductions were in order. Welcome to all our new volunteers, thank-you!
CRCAG Board of Directors
- Brenda Leeds Binder, Co-Preseident
- Tony Morris, Co-President
- Anna Mravcak, Treasurer
- David Carlson
- Steve Forrest
- Simon Geoghegan
- Greg Johnson
- Emma May
- Rob Nieuwesteeg
Bow River Committee
- Rob Nieuwesteeg
- June Kilcolm
- Charlie Lund
- Jean Woeller
Regulatory Committee
- Lauren Bell
- Simon Geoghegan
- Rachel Kolber
- Rob Motherwell
Another addition to the crusade for upstream mitigation was introduced at the meeting; welcome Flood Free Calgary to the fight! Leading the charge, Paul Battistella gave a brief overview of the organization and outlined what type of help they need.
Launched in December 2017, Flood Free Calgary is rallying the business community to advocate for upstream mitigation on both the Elbow and Bow Rivers. Emphasizing the message of economic risk and highlighting that if we lose our downtown core we will ALL lose, Paul has worked tirelessly to hammer home the message that our economic future is at risk and we must act now.
You can help by joining as a supporter and encouraging your company to do so. As a supporter, you would receive critical flood mitigation information and updates, which you would then push out to your business network to amplify the message. The more people reached, the better.
Find out more at floodfreecalgary.com or email info@floodfreecalgary.com.
Next up we heard from the province and city. You can download the materials from all presenters here:
- 2018 CRCAG AGM – CRCAG
- [no slides] – Hon. Minister Brian Mason, Minister of Transportation
- [speaker panel] – Crystal Damer, Assistant Deputy Minister Springbank Reservoir
- Bow River Water Management Project – Blackwood, Assistant Deputy Manager, Strategy Division Environment and Parks
- Local Flood Mitigation Update – Frank Frigo, River Engineering Group, Watershed Planning, Water Resources, City of Calgary Water Resources
Following the formal presentations, we invited all speakers to the front for a Q&A panel.
Media in attendance included Postmedia (Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun), CBC, Global News, and City TV.
Thank you to the (apx 200) members who attended, the volunteers that orchestrated the event, and to National on 10th for graciously hosting us.
You can read Tony’s heartfelt post-AGM thank-you note here and view photos here.
If you have any questions or comments for us, please reach out to us at info@crcactiongroup.com.
Thanks,
Your CRCAG Board