Monday, April 27, 2009

Those good old Hamilton days!


Our interim Development Director, Joan Nelson, is a great lady! She is a no nonsense, nose to the grindstone worker, who works in Development for a number of places. Our “regular” Development Director is still out on maternity leave but is almost back. She does appear from time to time and I am happy for both of them.

Joan is with us on a part-time basis with her major focus being grant writing although she has been taken far afield from that due to our “needs du jour”.

We have been working on a newly minted federal grant assuring accessibility. We have been trying, for some time, to get enough money to build an elevator onto our 1836 building. This is a $300,000 project and is proving much tougher than we thought to raise, especially because of the current financial crisis everywhere.

We have been collecting letters from friends and important people to add to our grant, and Joan figured we needed a letter from our mayor to help “sweeten the pot”.

While she was researching the subject, she put together some sample letters for people to use as guidelines for writing their own letters. She ran into an accessibility focus as developed by the Hamilton Mayor and City council, and asked if we should include this with the information that we pass on to the mayor, and I, of course, agreed.

We included the wording and sent it on, hoping we could have something back asap.

I received a call from the Mayor’s assistant on Friday, letting me know that we had to change the letter. Why, I asked? It seems that the City Council’s passing and the Mayor’s endorsement of the letter are still being questioned.

They did approve it, it seems, but in Hamilton, New Zealand!

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