As a non City of Calgary employee now....I am afforded the opportunity to say something public without the constraints of city protocol. So here goes! Tonight on the Calgary news, there was a report on the Bowness Bicycle Road race, along with a secondary story of their street festival and the pride the residents had of their home community. One even mentioned that it had not always been that way....but they are so happy to celebrate with their community now and show all of Calgary what a special place it is. Yes....it has not always been that way! A once proud village had lost its way in the years leading up to 2004, and the anger of community residents was palpable. Yes, the City of Calgary took extraordinary measures, putting their Community Association into receivership when they defaulted at the bank. We had no choice. Our lease agreement with them forced us to. But what started then, was alot of hard, tedious work, working through all of the legal messes, investing public money into a failing community facility that was used by 1,000s of people, even beyond Bowness. Gradually, a group of courageous community people emerged to offer leadership at a time that it was not popular to do so. And the City staffed involved logged hundreds and hundreds of hours in all aspects of City support to help them along the way. Their member of City Council ( Dale Hodges) was tenacious in his support....the Director of Community and Neighbourhood Services - Chris Branch, never faltered in his leadership. And the staff of the then North area invested their time, energy, creativity and other city resources all through the communitys journey. It took almost 6 years to see them healthy again. And now....seeing the news report on their road race....and the throngs of people involved with todays community events, it seems to me to be well worth the effort. I hope you share in their success as well Chris Branch! I am deeply proud of the work that was done by my area staff throughout the years. In particular Bill Fraser, Gini Clark, our program staff, Mike OReilly and the staff of CRS. Plus our admin staff, namely Brenda Martinson who always provided the in house support for all community initiatives. There are many many more people who provided support at critical times....in the Law Dept...Recreation...Parks....City Clerks....and our GMs office. It was a major undertaking! It was tough...and often lonely work. The community worked very hard for their successes. But like all good community developers, we could not take the credit. But I can say it now. Take a bow.....job well done!
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 01:01:25 +0000