June 23rd, 2022 Board Meeting Recap
AWC-WPAC, Friday Read, and Governance | July 2022
On June 23rd, we hosted our first hybrid board meeting! Dan Moore and Laura Pekkola were able to join staff at the AWC office in the morning, and Brian Deheer made it out in the afternoon. A number of other directors joined via zoom, including some of our new board members! A very warm welcome to Alyssa-Mae Laviolette, Kennedy Deregt-Taschuk, and Julie Hink for joining our board of directors.
After a round table of introductions and a land acknowledgment, the agenda was reviewed and approved. The June board meeting is where we elect our officers, and Petra (our executive director) was the presiding officer for the elections. Nominations were recruited before the board meeting, and the floor was open for additional nominations. The executive committee of the Athabasca Watershed Council was confirmed as Dan Moore as President, Kendra Gilbert as Vice President, Paula Evans as Secretary, and Cleo Reese as Treasurer.
Following the election, Petra gave a financial and activity update to the board. Major activity updates included: hiring Aneilia Ayotte as our Science Communications Coordinator for the summer; conducting a drinking water resiliency survey and receiving a report on the results of the survey by capstone student Laura Nethery; the approval of William Zhang’s under-ice monitoring NSERC grant; becoming involved in some ALUS program projects. We also continued to work on our other projects and made the board aware our riparian data are available online.
Curtis Brock gave an AEP update, and we will be sharing some of those updates in future blog posts and on social media. Following the AEP update, the board had an in-camera session to discuss how the AWC can support a competitive salary and benefits package for staff and then we were off to lunch!
Following lunch, Petra led the board through the first sections of a board member’s information binder she had prepared and sent out to all our board members. She is working to ensure that we have comprehensive information binders to facilitate staff and board transition and to ensure AWC policies and practices are consistent and implementable. There was good discussion on what to add to the information binders, and that concluded the board meeting!
The next board meeting is scheduled to be in-person in Lac La Biche this fall (September 15-16).