Chairman’s Report for the Year Ending 31 March 2011
The year 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011 has come to an end with yet another year of decreasing income for grants to the local community. As a pub charity that supports many of the local interest groups in the Turangi/Southern Lake Taupo area, whether they are in the nature of sporting, creative, educational, or local support groups or promoting Turangi to the wider public in order to lift numbers coming here to discover our local attractions, it saddens us to see a financial resource slowly ebbing away. Of course the Harm Minimisation lobby will be smiling. I have to say that even these people are happy to use what funds are available from pub charities to fund their pet interests. Double standards!
We continue to meet on a monthly basis except over the Christmas holiday period when the whole of New Zealand seems to be out of town at some time or another so the need for grants goes on holiday too.
This year two of our long standing trustees decided it was time to move on to other interests. Their resignations were received after our last Annual General Meeting and were accepted with regret. It was decided to offer one of the trustee positions to our Secretary/Grants Officer, which she accepted. It took us sometime to find a suitable person to fill the remaining vacancy. We have now appointed retired accountant to the position; he is able to add his experience as a board member of other organisations to our trustee group.
This year we purchased a new Neo gaming machine and part of the purchase was a free upgrade of one of our other machines and this included the installing of the Sinfo kit requested by Internal Affairs by November 2015. At our last meeting the trustees agreed that it was important to start upgrading further machines so that we did not have to meet the whole cost at the last minute. We have chosen to upgrade four machines per year. After this first upgrade we will have six machines ready for 2015 leaving twelve still to complete. We might even get another “special deal” from United Gaming over this period. We thank them for their support throughout the year giving us monthly reports so that we can monitor the progress of our new machine and the upgrade.
Our Venue Operator, Four Fish continues to host our gaming machines and we thank the management and staff for their support and assistance throughout the year both in the gaming room and with communications between us.
Strettons, our accountants continue to look after our financial affairs to our entire satisfaction and we find them a pleasure to deal with. The Accounting partner has been available to advise us in the purchase of our new gaming machine and the staff member who looks after our books is a pleasure to work with.
Finally I thank my fellow trustees for the time they give to help with the grants process and to pass on their knowledge and needs of the community when it comes time to fund a particular group or project.
Thank you to all.