Hall Guardianship - Te Puna Hall

TE PUNA MEMORIAL HALL SOCIETY INCORPORATED

— connecting our community

OUR PURPOSE:

Our People

To promote community enrichment.
To remember and celebrate our local and wider cultural landscape.
To value and preserve our local history.
To reflect our diverse communities of interest.
To promote education, the arts, and creativity in the community.
To promote personal and community health and wellbeing.
To invite partnerships with local non-profit organisations and schools to host meetings, celebrations, events, and family gatherings.
To continue to explore how the hall can add value to the community.

Our Environment

To create a welcoming, attractive space.
To provide accessible, high-quality facilities that allow for a wide range of activities.
To lead by example with good environmental practices.
To acknowledge and celebrate our history.

Our Guardianship

To act in accordance with our charitable purposes.
To be a committed and enthusiastic committee with a range of strengths.
To work effectively together to achieve our goals.
To ensure financial sustainability.
To meet all compliance requirements.
To care for and maintain the building, facilities and surrounds.
To explore how the hall can add value to the community.
To regularly review and provide for succession needs.
To be open and flexible to new opportunities.
To be mindful of the demands on volunteers.

OUR PLANS:

Our People

Update website to make it more welcoming and informative, and more user-friendly.
Identify opportunities to promote the hall and upcoming events in social media and other media platforms to help raise its profile in the community.
Develop a Hall User policy that allows for special dispensation to reduce barriers to use of the Hall.
Endeavour to facilitate at least two community events per year.
Investigate the viability of having a PR role.

Our Environment

To develop a vision for the hall surrounds.
To develop and implement relevant hall cleaning policy and practices.
To budget for a caretaker/cleaner role.
To develop relationships with preferred suppliers (e.g. technology, plant hire, catering, etc.)
To investigate the possibility of solar installation and sources of funding to provide green energy.
To support further development of the archive room.

Our Guardianship

To regularly review committee membership and processes.
To create an annual budget on which to base decisions.
To regularly review financial results against projected budgets.
To regularly review compliance requirements.
To create a user-friendly and integrated website, booking and invoicing system.
To formulate and review clear user policies and practices.
To identify and seek funding opportunities.

TE PUNA MEMORIAL HALL – AGM 2022 CHAIRMANS REPORT

This has been a much more settled year with the previous year’s effects of Covid 19 relaxing considerably. We continue to have a stable and enthusiastic committee and we are fortunate that all the committee are happy to remain in their roles for another year. We are in a sound financial position; we have a good base of regular users and the hall remains in excellent condition.

HAPPENINGS IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS. (in no particular order)

Faye Hick, our previous booking officer and cleaner, stood down from all her roles with the hall after we had secured the Services of Jim’s Cleaning Company. We were very grateful for Faye’s efforts and the transition was seamless and the new cleaners are proving to be very friendly, adaptable and do a wonderful job.

The booking system using Spacetoco continues to be very effective and is operating well with considerable help of Sue Poananga who does an outstanding job in this, the most challenging aspect of the hall’s operation.

Connection to the local wastewater scheme. The decision was taken to join the new wastewater scheme despite having our own and very new septic tank system. The logic was it was in the hall’s best interest in the long term to connect now and avoid the ongoing compliance issues with the septic tank system. The Western Bay of Plenty District were very helpful and provided the connection at no cost other than the annual connection fee. This is a great outcome for the hall, and because the septic tanks as part of the old system have been used, we have a four- or five-day storage capacity in the event of a serious power outage. Also, the land previously used for the septic tank drainage field could be utilised for other purposes in the future.

Plan Change 93 request by our neighbours Te Puna Springs (Supermac Group Annaliese Michel). This proposal went to a hearing at the WBOPDC on the 6^th July 2022. Jo Gravit handled the submissions on our behalf and represented us at the hearing. In essence the applicant was seeking to have the zoning in an area of approx. 6ha surrounding the hall changed to allow for development. Despite objections on our part and by Doug Kirk and Heartland Te Puna the zoning change was approved. The likely effect on the hall will be the removal of the existing Modcom business to another location and a new development to occur on our Northern boundary. The council have granted the applicants the rights for buildings to be up to the height limit of 12m’s. It looks like our modified request for an access road to the new development be just outside our Northern boundary has been granted. This will give space between the hall and the potentially 12-metre-high buildings which we hope will reduce the shading effect on our open area on the Northern side of the hall. Part of the approval provides for a wetland to the west and south of the hall. To my knowledge no timetable has been set for the new development but in time it is very likely that our new neighbours will include retailers and the likes of Mitre 10. We are sincerely grateful for the work done on our behalf by Jo Gravit who gave us a voice and an involvement in this planned designation change.

Hall compliance. It is a legal requirement that our hall be regularly checked and independently monitored for compliance of such things as fire and other health and safety issues. We have employed the services of Ian Saunders’s company Bay Building Compliance Management who will do this on our behalf. It is fair to say we are having some issues with this transition but are making progress and hope to have this sorted before the end of this calendar year.

Electrical timers. We have three systems within the hall that are operated on electrical timers. The most important being an air ducting system that brings air from the outside for cooling and ventilation. It took some time to identify the location of these timers and to correct the very random way they were set (fans coming on in the middle of the night!). John Ward electrical have been very helpful in working with us and will shortly install a simple keypad which will allow us to simply operate the systems manually. This will be a huge advantage as it will allow our users to better control temperatures and ventilation.

Community events. It is part of our strategic plan to make our hall available for community events. This year so far, we have donated our facilities to Victory Performance Centre to help our long-term tenant, Tessa, with her community dance event. Also, we hosted a fund raising “Ukrainian Concert” run by the Lizard Newspaper and the Te Puna Hall centenary celebration. The Ukrainian concert was a great success and demonstrated how an audience of just over 200 can be feed and entertained by a concert in the hall and still having enough room for dancing. The centenary celebrations were a day and night-time event organised, advertised, and run by the members of the committee. It was a major undertaking and despite terrible weather was a real hit and provided entertainment for lots of children and adults alike. We contributed something just short of $3,000 to fund the activities but consider the benefits to the community, and the exposure of the hall to new users, money well spent. Sincere thanks must go to the committee members who put in so much time and effort to make this event a real success.

Repairs and Maintenance. Obviously, an ongoing issue for us and something we need to stay on top of. There are some relatively minor issues we are currently working on, but it is our aim to ensure the hall and surrounds are maintained in top condition. We do receive funding from rate payers and this year we received something just over $4.00 per rate payer in our collection area. Special thanks to our committee members who help in this area and a special mention to Bill Scapens who washed and cleaned the outside of the hall.

UPCOMING PLANS.

We are currently looking very seriously at installing solar panels on our hall roof to generate electricity. It is hoped that we can not only reduce our own power costs, but that surplus power can be gifted, or sold at very reduced rates to other deserving organisations within our community.

The Archive Room. As part of our hall, we have a dedicated space devoted to maintaining important records and information from our local community. This project has been on the back burner as we have got the hall up and running but it is hoped in the coming 12 months, we can expand this project further. Persons willing to contribute to this project in any way would be most welcome.

Engagement with the community. This is another ongoing part of our operation, but we are keen to make sure our facilities are well used and available to all for significant community events.

THANKS

A huge thanks to those people that have made this such a successful year for our Memorial Hall. I would like to make special mention of our wonderful, very hard working and dedicated committee. Also, our supportive regular hall users, our cleaning staff and those that so generously donate their time so freely. We really appreciate it.

Ian Duncalf