Page 4 - Mar-Apr 2020
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Jamie Keating
Commodore commodore@rcyc.ca
It’s been an exciting hive of activity around our St. George winter home. Witness our creative social and family events, ever-freshened fitness, squash, badminton, bridge, plus our newer ones of Short Mat Bowling in the Sports Hall and of course our model boat sailing in the pool. By ever-freshened, for example, I’m referring to this year’s inaugural Member-Guest Squash Invitational (following on our Carlton Squash tourney introduced some ten years ago!) and now new again this year for the RCYC – a racquet sport called Pickleball. Ever a source of unwritten history, Paul Henderson tells a wonderful story of Pickleball’s origin, which includes dogs and sailors, two of my absolute favourite subjects - ask him about it sometime. Our many new fitness class variations, no small thanks to our wonderful new fitness director (welcome Leigh!) have also been a source of great pleasure, like Wednesday’s 5:00 pm Body Weight Circuit and even last summer’s Island Sunset Yoga! Watch for more next summer, including perhaps a paddleboard on-the-water version (I’ll be swimming for sure). Speaking of our beautiful Island property, there too we have some great stories of refreshed activity where for example, we now dry- dock the largest North American fleet of VX Ones here at the RCYC, in just its third year. Our budding Member- Staff Race Management program has been a raging success, drawing sailors, new and experienced, back into the legacy lifeblood of this Club, its sailboat racing pedigree. My point is that it’s these fresh and vibrant activities that each prove that our Members and Staff thrive working together, partnering to not just keep up, but to also lead in building the sailing, racquet, sports and social Member activities that define us.
It’s this partnership of creativity and accountability that we are striving to deliver with our new Management Team. As our GM & COO, Neil Rooney, rebuilds our Senior Management Team, we are focused on Member service, efficiency and effectiveness. Change is hard, but our team is hard at work on their plan. And these principles will be reflected in our important new hires.
As you may have noticed, alongside our broader Go Green initiative, our new Management Team have led the charge with steps to e-upgrade our Member communications, billing and soon our point- of-sale technology. Similar green initiatives will be seen increasingly in our food outlets and on the Island. We are taking steps to improve Island accessibility, for both Members and Staff, with our fast-ferry alternative
to our iconic main launches, Kwasind and Hiawatha. We expect that by facilitating alternate access from downtown, those using public transit or working in the core for example, will enjoy quay-side pick-up for race nights, business or casual lunches and other events as required. Importantly, this will also fulfill our responsibility to provide barrier-free accessibility to our Island. Further, alternative access may prove helpful with the dual challenges of (1) the Cherry Street reconstruction project and related road access closures this summer (and next?) and (2) with a more flexible (specific point) Island access during flood conditions (more on that in a minute). And lastly, we expect to capture cost savings by running this lower-cost alternative during shoulder periods, when our Launch traffic is predictably light. Let’s all help and support Management with their implementation.
At the Board level, our Governance Committee is making progress on a refreshed governance structure, including proposals to trim the size of our Board, tighten the focus of our Nominating Committee and to bring technology to our meetings, proxy and voting systems, again to modernize Member access and engagement in our Club governance.
Our Membership Committee is tackling the challenge of our unwieldy and outdated Member category structure, again to align us better with Member equity principles and general peer club norms. Our Property Committee has already started on an Island clean- up program aimed at our pride in property initiative. You may have noticed the early gains of the locker building exterior refresh last year, which we expect will continue and be followed up with a broader ‘tag and remove’ effort, a Member-Staff partnership project, aimed at eliminating random and outdated personal property on Island premises. Please watch for important communications on this as it may impact your unmarked dinghy, bike, BBQ, picnic table, propane tank or other property left or abandoned on our Island property. This will be conducted in conjunction with the long- overdue resurfacing of our Rainbow bridge, some west seawall reconstruction, elimination of our Snug Island cottage (formerly the GM cottage), clean-up of the South Island tennis courts and the Junior Club jungle among other initiatives. Unfortunately, we have run into a series of unforecasted but required expenditures that again highlight our need for sharpened asset management, and we are working to implement and
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MARCH/APRIL 2020 • KWASIND
COMMODORE MESSAGE