Welcome to the Leefield Community League Web Site, or Web Page if you are reading this through the new Mill Woods President’s Council’s Web Site.
Some of you that live in the Leefield Community League, or in any other community league in Mill Woods, may have noticed that for the past year you have not been receiving a hard copy of the Mill Woods Newsletter in your mailbox. The reason for this is that these community Newsletters are no longer produced and instead, have been replaced by an electronic version of the old Mill Woods Newsletter. Is this a good thing? A forward thinking move to the future? I guess time will tell.
So what was wrong with the old Mill Woods Newsletter and why did the MWPC dump it? Part of the problem was there was such a problem getting the newsletter delivered. Oh, most people did get it, but some estimate that as many as 20% - 30% of the homes in Mill Woods did not receive their newsletter in any given month, which wasn’t fair and led to complaints by these residents and their community leagues. And those that did receive it one month, may not have received it the next month. At best, one could say that delivery was very inconsistent. Another problem was that community leagues were given deadlines for submission to the newsletter on about the 15th of a given month and then most people didn’t see it in their mailbox until at least the 7th day of the next month. By then much of the information was already stale-dated.
The MWPC did a significant amount of research into why there were so many newsletters that did not see peoples mailboxes, and even considered having Canada Post deliver the newsletters for us. But because of the large size of the newsletter, we would have had to make the newsletter significantly smaller. This led to possible restrictions on font size and the number of pages that each community league would be allow to submit. We also learned that having Canada Post deliver our newsletters would not result in them being delivered in a more timely fashion as they deliver what they refer to as bulk mail during a general time period, which is not nearly as frequent as regular mail. But above all, the issue was the cost of delivery. It was deemed too expensive for two out of the ten community leagues in Mill Woods and they opted out. Once they did that, their “share” of the cost for the production and delivery of the newsletter would have had to have been absorbed by the remaining eight community leagues. And this was something that most community leagues simply couldn’t afford to do. So that series of events signalled the end of the hard copy newsletter that we had for so many years.
Since this is the “Leefield” perspective, I can assure our members that Leefield was not in favour of discontinuing the hard copy newsletter and moving to an on-line version of it. After all, despite the fact that newspapers like the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun area available in on-line editions, I personally enjoy reading my newspaper and flipping through it over my morning coffee each day. My concern that is our members simply won’t bother going to the Leefield Web Site or try and find the on-line version of the Mill Woods Newsletter on the Mill Woods President’s Council Web Site. But the bottom line is that the newsletter was just to expensive to produce and deliver without sharing the cost between all ten community leagues. We are also considering the possibility of producing our own Leefield Community Newsletter, but at this point we are still in the early stages of this idea.
What else is new at Leefield? Well, our Outdoor Rinks have both been open since the middle of December, and have been fairly well attended. Once again our main Outdoor Rink, now called “The Andre Clement Community Rink”, has the best outdoor ice in Edmonton. And this is thanks to Andre Clement, our Ice-Maker, and our part-time staff, who maintain the ice on a daily basis. The main issue we have had this year is that the weather has been so extreme. It has gone from being too cold to open the rink (-20 C is our limit). or it has been so warm that the ice was too soft to allow people to skate on it. It’s been one of those years, but talking to other community leagues Presidents, they advise that they have had the same problem this season.
I’m very pleased to announce that ten months after our community league had a major fire, the repairs have now finally been completed to the men’s washroom and a couple of other rooms in our hall.
Another piece of good news is that we have undergone a major renovation in our Fireside Room, changing the colour, replacing the floor, changing the lights, and adding two new large screen televisions. The reality is that it is so important to keep our hall ‘current’, and to make sure that we continue to keep it well maintained. We need to do this to continue to make it attractive to our members and to potential renters. I am proud that our hall continues to be one of the most active and well utilized community league halls in Edmonton.
Please remember to check our Web Site for the many events and programs that we hold at Leefield. We have everything from Zumba classes to Pre-Teen Dances to a Day Care. We are always interested in hearing from our members as to what types of things that they would like to see happen at the Leefield Community League.
And if you have any ideas, questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email me directly at wiltonowski@shaw.caor our Facilities Manager, Jackie, at facilitymanager@leefield.ca
Thought of the Day: “The Best Things in Life are not Things."
Your Proud Leefield President,
Wil Tonowski