BOYLE — After two years on life support, the Boyle District Chamber of Commerce is one year away from being done.
At the organization's annual general meeting Feb. 10, the executive of the past two years — president Bob Clark, vice president Ellen Knowles, and secretary-treasurer Karen Keyes all said they were stepping down after trying to keep the non-profit alive, after it was almost shuttered in 2020.
“I talked with the head (Alberta Chamber of Commerce) guy, and he said we basically have two options if we don't get an executive,” said Keyes. “We can either dissolve, in which case … people on our insurance would be moved over to somebody else … and he said the other one is to go inactive and dormant in which case we would have to have someone pick up the bank statements every month.”
The funds the group has right now could be handed over to the Village of Boyle to hold until an executive is found and then there would be startup money, or the funds would be dispersed to local charities.
“When you guys asked about having the village hold it for us, that would work, as long as we had a really good agreement that in place so that they would know what to do with it and so that there would be no question about what to do with the funds,” she said.
Clark said the groundwork had been laid for the village to take over the bank accounts.
“Ellen and I did attend a village council meeting just to do some preliminary road work to see what would happen if it tanked,” he said.
Village of Boyle Coun. Shelby Kiteley and Coun. Mike Antal were also in attendance and confirmed administration was willing to babysit the accounts until such time as a new executive could be found, along with Keith Madsen who hoped he could find enough people to prevent it from being shuttered.
“If you guys need me to step in and play one of the roles I will do my best obviously,” he said. “I've never done this before so any advice would help but I'm happy to offer my time and services up to help.”
Unfortunately, there were not enough members in attendance at the meeting to allow the full executive to be changed so the decision was to let the group go dormant for one year.
The funds will be held by the municipality, to be returned if a new executive can be found, but if after a maximum of one year no one has come forward the GIC held by the group will be given to the Boyle Betterment Committee and the funds in the bank will be divided equally between the Greater Athabasca Community Foundation, the Boyle Food Bank, the Boyle Seniors’ Society, the Boyle Ag Society, and Angels in Motion.
“But we would encourage any business people who are interested in joining the chamber contact the Athabasca and District Chamber of Commerce (ADCC) for membership,” Clark said.
ADCC president Tove Schwede was also in attendance and noted the Athabasca Chamber AGM will be held Feb. 16, so if any Boyle businesses wanted to sit on the executive they needed to join quickly.
“I will draft a letter or an e-mail to Karen that she can just then share with past and current membership so that they all know that they're welcome to join us and if anyone would like to be on our board of directors, we need the nomination and the proper paperwork and dues to be paid in order for that to happen,” Schwede said. “They would need to pay their membership by that morning.”
More information can be found on the ADCC website.
