On behalf of the Board of Directors for the Hidden Valley Community Association, I’d like to extend our best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2022. I hope that you had a chance to observe the end of 2021 with the people most important to you, in a way that brought you joy and peace.
With the start of the new year, we’re looking forward to getting back to connecting with residents in Hanson Ranch and Hidden Valley. We’ll be starting off with a return to Winterfest, this month on Saturday, January 15 from 2:00 to 6:00 pm. Although we were not able to host Winterfest in 2021, we have been working hard to put together this year’s event for you and we hope to see many of you there! We are very hopeful that we will have the rink ready to go before Winterfest, and that folks can make skating part of their celebrations.
From the business side of Board operations, January represents the mid-year of our plan. This year, our major capital project for park revitalization at Hidden Hills Way will break ground. And we also keep moving ahead with other space revitalizations as the conditions at our park spaces and the makeup of our community changes. This year, we move ahead with two major projects affecting our community spaces: the playground space between Hidden Valley Heights and Hidden Circle (HID519) and the unexpected full replacement of the temporarily repaired rink boards.
A planned playground refresh requires about two years from initial identification to completion and represents a significant investment of director time and commitment from the budget. In the fall of 2021, the Board met with the City to identify which park spaces in our master plan (www.h2spaces.org) align with their planning and our community’s needs. In 2022, fundraising for our park space work will look to build on the strategies that our Parkspaces director, Sarah P., organized for playgrounds through the first part of this year. We also have a June 2022 date confirmed for our community association fundraising casino, and we’ll be asking for residents and HVCA members to help out at the end of June.
As the HVCA heads into the last six months of the current year’s plan, we also want to make sure we are set for programming and events for our members and residents, and that we are listening to and working with our residents to improve our quality of life. The last few months of 2021 were unusually busy in our community, and residents have been working with Board members to try to make improvements. By the March newsletter, we should be able to report back on some of that work.
Looking forward after Winterfest through the fall of 2022, your Board Members are working to provide a spring event, outdoor soccer, a repeat of the pop-up food trucks for the summer, and –weather permitting – some type of mid-summer programming. We have to wait to see about Community Clean up, but we are very much looking forward to celebrating our community’s (belated) 25th anniversary at the end of summer to coincide with Alberta’s Heritage and Culture Days.
Until next month, keep safe and healthy, and look after yourself and your neighbours.
Neill C.
