Year-end Committee Reports - Summer 2021

Article from Volume 8, Issue Number 3, 2021

Year-end Committee Reports - Summer 2021

SPONSORSHIP & AGM COMMITTEE
The AGM/Sponsorship Committee is responsible for arranging the AGM and campaigning for sponsorships. Sponsorship is an extremely important part for any organization, it is the financial support for events such as AGM’s, Webinars, Lunch & Learns, Quarterly Newsletters in addition to keeping membership and CCI events affordable. It also increases awareness for our Professional and Business partners by promoting their company at events including the CCI website, Eblasts as well as AGM’s. Their sponsorship also allows them to successfully network at any particular in person event.

This year our AGM will be held virtually because of provincial restrictions on gatherings. We are planning to hopefully hold the 2022 AGM in person at Fort Gibraltar with a Halloween Theme, so start planning your fantastic costume ideas!

We are always looking for volunteers for our committee, if you are interested in volunteering, please contact CCI Manitoba Chapter to learn more.
I would like to thank the Committee members: Matt Jerome, Kathleen Vandale and Patricia Salam for their hard work, dedication and contributions.

WE WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS OUR SINCERE GRATITUDE TO ALL OUR SPONSORS, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO CCI AND OUR MEMBERS.

Connie Dame
Chair, CCI MB Sponsorship & AGM Committee

GOVERNMENT RELATIONS COMMITTEE
The Government Relations Committee will start developing positions for CCI-Manitoba to consider adopting on a list of issues of concern to its members. Although amendments to the Manitoba Condominium Act (the “Act”) may not be at the top of the priority list of the Government of Manitoba, CCI plans to be ready should the opportunity present itself to comment on the various issues. Having policies in place will also enable CCI-Manitoba to advocate for the Province to consider amendments to the Act as well. The list developed by the Committee is as follows:

1. Short-term rentals
2. Reserve Fund Studies
a. Unrealistic target amounts and the gap between recommended amounts and reality for many of our members
b. Requiring reserve fund studies for new developments
2. Whether or not to allow the use of reserve funds for more than repair and maintenance
3. Review of small condo exceptions on requirements such as reserve fund studies and audited statements
4. Whether or not to allow 55+ restrictions in condominiums
5. Lien priority and time for filing
6. Whether or not there should be a public list of directors’ names
7. Real Estate Services Act and requirements for Condominium Property Managers
8. Do we need a Manitoba Condo Authority similar to the Condominium Authority in Ontario?
9. Whether or not there should be guidance regarding service animals
10. Turnover procedures on Phased Condos (and the payment of common expenses on undeveloped phased units)
11. Mandatory director education
12. Meeting procedural issues (directors and unit owners)
13. Electronic/Advance/Email voting
14. Fines for Declaration infractions (currently fines are limited to breaches of the By-laws and Rules)
15. Proxy issues, and the solicitation of proxies
16. Should Status Certificates be mandatory?
17. Whether or not to permit equitable but different reserve fund contributions for different types of units

The Committee invites any member to submit suggestions of other topics that deserve consideration. Submissions can be sent to ccimanitoba@cci.ca. Please mark Emails to the attention of the “Government Relations Committee”. Alternatively, suggestions to improve the Act can be submitted on our website via
https://cci-manitoba.ca/resources/the-condominium-act-suggestions-for-improvement

DOUG FORBES
Chair, CCI MB Government Relations Committee

NOMINATING COMMITTEE
This is a newly formed committee with a mandate to
1. To provide a list of possible candidates for each AGM to ensure there is a full slate of qualified and capable candidates for the open positions
2. To develop a recruitment plan
3. To develop a succession planning policy and procedure
4. To develop a director mentoring plan

In normal times, we’d approach CCI members at the various educational and social events during the year. Due to Covid and the lack of normal times, it is much more difficult to have exploratory discussions with members about their possible interest in volunteering to join our Board or one of our Committees.

We’d like our Board and Committees to have a diverse set of skills and abilities from individuals from both condominium unit owners and condominium industry professionals. Each and every member of CCI is a potential candidate. CCI Manitoba is a volunteer organization working with business partners, condominium owners and professionals for the betterment of the condominium market in Manitoba. Regardless of your background and whether you are working full-time, part-time or are retired, you can provide valuable contributions towards our shared goal of “creating a successful and viable condominium community”.

Perhaps you enjoy writing – consider joining our Newsletter Committee or providing an article or two. If you are active on social media or have a public relations background – consider joining our Communication Committee to improve our social media presence and our overall messaging. Maybe you enjoy event planning – you can help us plan our Annual General meeting or help improve the customer experience in our Lunch-n- Learn education sessions. Those of you with backgrounds with provincial or municipal governments or crown corporations could be of assistance to our Government Relations Committee. As well, if you have a sales or marketing background, we could use your skills for membership and sponsorship drives and advertising sales.

If you are interested in volunteering with CCI Manitoba, please get in touch with us with a phone call 204-794-1134 or an email
ccimanitoba@cci.ca.

ALAN FORBES
Chair, CCI MB Nominating Committee

COMMUNICATION & MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
The past twelve months have been challenging. We hope that with increasing vaccination rates, a return to some semblance of normal is just around the corner. The Communication and Membership Committee invites that return to normal. From 2019 to 2020, we saw a drop in membership. To counter the membership drop, we developed three initiatives.
• A membership survey to better understand our members. The results of the survey have generated discussion that will focus
our efforts toward two stakeholder groups; property managers and condominium corporations.
• An early renewal incentive program launched in early 2021 and ending on June 30th, 2021, resulted in a 26% increase
in early renewals from 2020.
• A new member referral incentive program is running from April 1 2021, to September 1 2021. While the numbers are not
yet in, we are hopeful that we’ll see similar results.

DUANE ROHNE
Acting Chair, CCI MB Communications & Membership Committee

FINANCE COMMITTEE
It has been an interesting year. I joined the board this last September and meeting virtually with the new board of directors has worked out well. However, I look forward to meeting with them all in person.

We are anticipating a deficit for this year. CCI fees have remained the same, except for the personal membership fee which was reduced from $125.00 to $75.00. There were cost savings due to Covid in which we incurred no travel costs but did invest in new social platforms to continue to provide CCI Lunch ‘n’ Learns.

I am looking forward to the new year with many new condominiums joining CCI. We are offering the condo introductory course and will continue to provide the Lunch ‘n’ Learns virtually and hopefully in person as well.

The CCI board of directors is working hard to provide value to all their members.

AUDREY HARDER
Chair, CCI MB Finance Committee

EDUCATION COMMITTEE
The Education Committee is responsible for offering educational webinars and Lunch & Learns to the condominium communities. This past year has been a challenge working through the pandemic for everyone. Our first and foremost important news is that we have been working diligently to complete the CCI Introductory Course to offer to our members, and we’re almost there! We received great feedback from our members who are anxiously waiting for the course.

Our next priority is to work on the CCI 200 course to provide a more in-depth education to the condominium communities. In addition, we are in the preliminary discussion stages for offering a CCI Introductory Course for Property Managers. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will be able to resume in person Lunch & Learns by the end of the year where we will offer both webinars and in person Lunch & Learns. If you have any suggestions on topics that you would like to learn about, we would love to hear from you.

We are always looking for volunteers for our committee, if you are interested in volunteering, please contact CCI Manitoba Chapter to learn more.

I would like to thank the Committee members: Carl Dalton, Audrey Harder, John Popowich, Alan Reiss and Patricia Salam for their hard work, dedication and contributions.

“EDUCATION IS THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON WHICH YOU CAN USE TO CHANGE THE WORLD”

CONNIE DAME
Chair, CCI MB Education Committee

NEWSLETTER COMMITTEE
I’d like to start out by thanking my Committee members Alan R., Duane, Kathleen, Pam and Maureen for their valuable contributions of articles and their time commitment to review and edit. Also, the newsletter would not make it out to any of our members without our admin team of Millanne and Aesia.

Over the past year we’ve become more consistent in publishing your newsletter on a consistent quarterly schedule, which is now posted on page 2 of each edition. One of the steps we’ve taken is to use online collaboration tools (Google Docs) which has helped us reduce our review and edit time by 20-30%.

While we have encouraged members to consider transitioning to electronic delivery of the newsletter, the vast majority still prefer the paper copy so we will continue to provide it in that format. We will however, continue to post PDF copies in the Members Only area on our website https://cci-manitoba.ca/members-only/newsletter-archive and look to make it easier to read on smartphones and tablets.

We continue to work on improving member engagement by becoming more timely in our responses to our features such as Condo Conversation Corner and Suggestions to Improve the Condo Act. As well, common themes across the various email inquiries and comments we receive are getting rolled up into articles.

Although we have tried to improve member engagement, we have failed at establishing one-to-one communications with the majority of our members via our email subscription list. While we do have the one-to-one option for our Individual and Professional members, the vast majority of our members are condo unit owners, whom we are still reliant on their respective property managers for communication. As well, we lack the one-to-one option for many property managers, administrators and support staff if the property management company is a Business Partner member. This limitation came to the forefront when we did our member survey this past year. If you are interested in joining our email subscription list, here is a link
https://cci-manitoba.ca/sites/default/default/popup/mailchimp.html or you can click the Stay Informed button on our website.

ALAN FORBES
Chair, CCI MB Newsletter Committee