AIDA 2020 AGM

Fifty of AIDA’s approximately 450 members attended the 2020 AIDA Annual General Meeting which, because of the COVID-19 assembly restrictions, was held on-line via Zoom at 3 pm on Saturday 30th May. A further fifteen members who were not able to attend the Zoom meeting provided proxy voting forms, all indicating their approval of the formal motions that had been advertised in advance in the emailed meeting papers. Interestingly, more members participated in our Zoomed AGM than normally attend in person when our AGMs are held in the Aireys Inlet Community Hall.

AIDA president Charlotte Allen welcomed local Surf Coast Shire councillors Margot Smith and Tony Revell, and the Shire’s CEO, Keith Baillie. Margot and Tony presented short reports on the activities of the Council, which can be found in the AIDA AGM 2020 Minutes . These will shortly be emailed to members and are available on the AIDA website.

During the formal portion of the AGM the Minutes of the 2019 AGM were accepted as a true record of that meeting and then Charlotte Allen presented a summary of her President’s Report for the 2019 calendar year. Treasurer Frieda Wachsmann then presented her Annual Financial Report for 2019 calendar year, which was formally received by the members. After the members had approved the continuation of our practice of having a maximum of twelve committee members in addition to the four office holders, the election of the 2020/21 Committee was held. Charlotte Allen thanked retiring committee members Ann and Ian Porter for their exceptional service (they had served a combined total of 18 years on the committee) and then reported that, there being no more than one person nominated for each position on the committee, the new AIDA Committee was declared to have been elected. Charlotte welcomed new members Leah Gaylard and Martin Gehrckens.

The formal portion of the AGM was followed by an extensive question and answer session, during which member’s questions were submitted via the chat function of Zoom, and read out by committee member Suzanne Cavanagh. Many of the questions were answered by Surf Coast Shire CEO Keith Baillie, and we thank him very much for his considered and illuminating responses. The questions (and some comments) and the responses are included in the Minutes document.

The Committee had originally planned to have a “What If” discussion about traffic management and evacuation plans after this year’s AGM, but we couldn’t proceed with it due to COVID-19. This session would have explored the interesting work that the Shire, and other agencies, are doing to keep us safe should we be impacted by bushfires. Given the severity of the recent bushfire season we felt that this would have been a very timely and important conversation with Surf Coast Shire’s Community Emergency Management team, Parks Victoria, DEWLP, CFA, and VicPol to discuss the current traffic management plans and evacuation scenarios in our area. We plan to proceed with a public meeting on this topic later in the year if conditions allow, or alternatively with a Zoom meeting, hopefully before the next fire season. All members, as well as our whole community and representatives of other communities along the GOR, will be invited once arrangements have been made.