President’s Message – October 9, 2025

Thank you to all of you who participated in our annual conference in St. Anthony a couple of weeks ago! On the other side of covid the association has made a concerted effort to get this event into communities off of the TCH… and it’s been a success. Bonavista, Twillingate, and now St. Anthony. In each location we’ve had great turnouts, solid professional development, and fun times.

This time around we hiked mountains, learned about AI, visited hydroponic farms, heard about cottage hospitals, and some even had dinner amongst the Vikings. We seem to have landed on a good formula for this event and have already started thinking about next year. Thanks to our Title Sponsor Keyin College, Travel Partner PAL Airlines, Networking Social Sponsor Professional Municipal Administrators, and Nutrition Break Sponsors Community Sector Council of NL, econext, and Community Foundation NL for making the event possible. A special thanks to the SABRI team who welcomed us into town with open arms and helped out with many of the logistics.

We know there’s always room for improvement and we’re happy to receive any and all constructive feedback on the event. In the end, there’s a limit to what we can achieve as a ragtag bunch of volunteers. This constraint goes beyond just the conference and applies to the organization as a whole; we realize it’s time to look seriously at hiring staff.

With this in mind, we are in the thick of developing a new strategic plan. With your help we have come up with some key findings and early thoughts. We test drove some of this at the conference and it seems like we are on the right track. Stay tuned in the weeks ahead for the opportunity to provide some final thoughts on where we take things from here. Spoiler alert: the stars are aligning on the following four priorities:

• Governance and operations
• More activities and supports
• Advocacy and recognition

Aside from the strategic plan, what’s up next? We will be having our Annual general meeting (online, details TBA), are hosting training courses in December, and we’ll hopefully have one or two webinars before the year is out.

Thanks for reading and let’s stay in touch.

// Kieran Hanley
President

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