Meeting Minutes

April 2, 2010

Participants:

1. Sam Kay (Secretary Farm watch)

2. Bill Annetts (Chairman Farm watch and Fire Warden FPA)

3. Howard Butcher (Chairman PHNC)

4. Tine Robinson (Treasurer PHNC)

5. Petra ten Velde (Secretary PHNC)

6. Grant McAlpine (Advisor PHNC)

7. Brendan O’Neill (Chairman RRRA)

A meeting was held between all main representatives of organizations operating in Rheenendal to discuss ways by which to merge efforts where these over lap, maintain transparent communication with all stakeholders, and also to discuss the feasibility of centralizing the management of the organizations under one umbrella.

Main Points Discussed:

• Bill provided a brief update on the FPA and mentioned that 2 large property landowners (Owen Morgan and Mr. Smit) have joined the FPA and are clearing their properties of alien invasives.
• The FPA still requires fire wardens for certain areas and is finalizing the management plan.
• There is over lap between FPA and PHNC with regard alien clearing; in order to lessen the fire threat alien veg needs to be cleared
• Even though this is the responsibility of each individual land owner, with the assistance of FPA and PHNC this can be more manageable and logistically cheaper if done within these organizations
• Petra has spoken to Cape Nature and they have offered to carry out alien veg mapping in specified area (s) and will provide the herbicide
• New approaches to clearing alien invasive vegetation involve the careful thinning of saplings on a regular basis, whilst allowing the indigenous to grow back (as opposed to clear felling which is currently being done and appears less effective)
• This needs to be thoroughly discussed between FPA and PHNC
• Other areas of overlap were discussed, including issues around the green rebate-which involves and affects many residents in Rheenendal
• There will be no rebate next year which makes the impetus for going for a green rebate higher
• As a community we will be more likely to qualify for green rebate if we are organized and well-informed
• This is also relevant on all other aspects concerning the community-the only issue is getting people on board!

Decisions taken:

ü The representatives of each organization agreed on the idea of a more centralized approach to managing the various organizations

ü This will help to overcome over lap and confusion between the works of each group

ü Exactly how this will be done needs to be further discussed

ü The possibility of having the chairmen of each group and a secretary to form the main structure of the Rheenendal Committee was proposed

ü Eventually, there could be a paid position seeing it would entail extensive logistical work to ensure appropriate management of the umbrella organisation

ü A letter will be sent out to the Rheenendal community for feed back

ü The possibility of having 1-2 AGM/year together whereby each organization is allocated a different time on that day was also proposed

ü The PHNC website could be used as a platform of communication between the organizations (one voice, one Community= empowerment)

ü Brendan has provided permission for the use of the web domain Rheenendal.com to be used for this specifically (thank you Brendan!)

ü Once feedback has been gathered a meeting will take place to finalize the specifics