Our Longest Serving Director Calls it a Day
By Mary Meadows, Co-op Secretary

Leigh Findlay joined the Maple Street Co-op Board in February 1997. Her very logical and disciplined intellect was well appreciated. With help from some others, she created the Rules of the Maple Street Co-operative. The Co-operatives Act has a set of Model Rules; however, these required considerable tweaking to make them appropriate for the Co-op. This involved a large portion of time and energy that Leigh freely gave.

Another major task Leigh completed was bringing some semblance of order to the membership list. Leigh, with Helen Rosenbaum and others, contacted all the members who could be contacted, and assessed their membership status. The Co-op at that stage had a rather large debt, and it was necessary to clean up the balance sheet, so members who had rebate shares were asked if they would be happy to donate these shares back to the Co-op.

The next major time-sapping activity was the Co-operative Development Centre. This took years of planning, revising, meetings with members, putting forward proposals, engaging architects, draughtsmen, plus many other professionals. Unfortunately, in reality, it was a pipe dream. Leigh with other Directors at the time took this all with good grace and were not deterred from being on the Board.

In the early days, Board meetings had a rotating facilitator. The Board decided that this process was a bit haphazard and made the position of Chair of the Board more permanent. Leigh was voted in as Chair and, by default, the Public Officer (she signed the tax return).

A few years ago, Leigh initiated a Strategic Planning Weekend that Jill Jordan chaired. Since that time, Leigh has not only guided the Board in this regard but has done considerable work on refining and updating these planning days, which occur in February/March each year.

Then we get to the planning for the Maple Street Co-op renovations. All Directors and staff have been intimately involved in this one, with a lot of credit going to Marc Kalifa and Al Tudorin for their hours of input, along with Tony Woodhouse more recently. Through this, Leigh has always been there to guide the process.

So as not to rest on our laurels, we had the Transfer of Engagement with the Club. This was another mini- minefield of rules and regulations of the Co-operatives Act that needed to be traversed.

Since that time, the Board has initiated Policy Governance, juggled the integration of the Club, renovated the Club premises, had constant liaising with Council over the Maple Street Co-op renovation plans and looked at ways to develop the back of the block, all of this ably steered by Leigh.

On a final note, she will be very sorely missed as the Chair and as a Director of the Co-op. Apart from her energy and integrity, 10 years of knowledge of the history of the Maple Street Co-op goes with her.

[From "Maple Street Co-op News", Apr/May 2007; published by The Maple Street Co-operative Society Ltd, 37 Maple Street, Maleny, Qld 4552, Australia, tel (07) 5494 2088, email maplest.co-op@serv.net.au,
website http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au]