Dear Friends and Neighbours in Pine Meadows

“I envy people who grow old gracefully like a fine wine. I’m aging like milk. Getting sour and chunky.”

Full vaccination needed to participate in activities at Pine Meadows
I thought I would share with you a couple of items we discussed at our Board Meeting on Wednesday. The last time I wrote to you we were just about to enter step-3 of Ontario’s Reopening Plan. Now more than a month later we are still in step 3 and the Reopening has been put on hold. This is due to the increase in the number of Covid cases caused by the Delta Variant. In fact, statistics are showing that this Variant is zoning in on our younger population who aren’t yet vaccinated. As even vaccinated people can still catch the virus, many people in our community are concerned that they may become infected (and maybe not even know that they have it) and then pass it along to grandchildren or unvaccinated portions of the population. After much discussion, the Board has decided that, in order to participate in Pine Meadows Activities including committees, you must be fully vaccinated. Of course, everyone must still follow the Health Department regulations to wear masks when in the Community Centre (except the swimming pool).

The PMHA Annual General meeting will be virtual this year
With a restriction of only 25 people allowed in the Community Centre the Board has also decided that once again the AGM will be held virtually on September 15th. Everyone will receive an invitation to attend via Zoom on your computer. If you aren’t able to attend live, the meeting will be recorded and placed on the website for people to view at their leisure. If you don’t have a computer, we suggest that you contact a neighbour with a computer and ask them if you could attend their AGM party (LOL). As we did last year, there will be a proxy voting form and question page included with the AGM Package which will be available in your internal mail slots by August 28th.  There will be more information available as we get closer to the date.

Community Chat (bulletin board) and Live Calendar.
The last two items I would like to advise you of a Bulletin Board called “Community Chat”, which is in the testing stage on the pmhahome.ca website. When you open the website and log in, you will be able to open Community Chat and read what others have posted or post something yourself. It can be used to ask for assistance/good contractor, update the community on events, suggest a good restaurant/retail store or advertise something that you have no need of and would like to sell or give away. This is just a sampling of what you could use it for – let your imagination run wild. You will be able to upload pictures of things for sale or giveaway. It is a great enhancement which will improve communications in Pine Meadows.

Another website enhancement which is being worked upon is a yearly live calendar which will be used to show all activities available on a daily basis. It will show you what is available for a year and will be updated as things change. This again will keep you current even if activities are cancelled or postponed and remind you of special events coming up. As a reminder, if you don’t have a password to access the PMHA website contact Perry Adams (519-546-7012) for assistance. There will be more information on these enhancements shortly.

Important messages
Also, you will have noticed that PMHA is now sending important and/or urgent messages directly to you. By law, these messages must have an “opt out” statement but we urge you to not opt out because you might miss an important message. We will try to keep these direct messages to a minimum. If you have other messages you would like to send out, Community Chat will soon be available for this purpose.  Also, some residents do not have email or internet access, so we ask neighbours and/or friends to pass on important information to them or help them put information into Community Chat.

Stay Safe Everyone

Joe Piercey