Ballintotis Area
Community Council

Treasurer's Report and Fundraising Summary 2010
Treasurer: Padraig O'Brien
Closing Balance	€56,715
Liam Lawton Concert
Ticket income: (873*25)	€21,825
Concert expense:	€8,629
Raffle profit	€3,246
Donations	€7,660
Total profit	€24,101
Road Race
Entry fees (450*10)	€4,500.00
Race expense:	€883.00
Total profit	€3,617.00
Tractor Run
Income:	€6,133.60
Expense:	€501.50
Total profit	€5,632.10
SuperValue Collection
Income:	€1,845
Expense:	€0
Total profit	€1,845
Curraheen Park Dog Night
Sponsorship & advertising	€5,240.00
Tickets, tables & dog noms	€6,210.00
Raffle & others	€1,578.00
Expenses	€5,084.00
Total profit	€7,944.00

 

Chairman’s Address. 17.11.2010

Ballintotis Area Community Council Ltd.

Welcome to everybody – to the Members of the Community and to Company Directors to our Annual General Meeting.

As decided by the Council, Ballintotis Area Community Council has now come under the umbrella of the Registered Company Limited by Guarantee , Ballintotis Area Community Council Ltd.

The Company is a registered charity operating in association with Muintir Na Tire.

I would like to acknowledge and celebrate briefly the progress of Ballintotis Community Council over the past years.

What our small community of 320 households or so has achieved is notable and has only happened because of the personal sacrifice provided in personal hours, service etc. by members of the community.

Ballintotis Community Council was formed in 2003 to

• Acknowledge all the positive work being done in the area by voluntary organisations and individuals.

• Address and support local initiatives of a social, cultural, environmental, sporting and infrastructural nature.
• Establish a forum that enables our community to move forward together in a structured manner so that we can have influence in decisions relating to our area and the life we live together.

As members of the community we have much to be grateful for what has been achieved by the Council during recent years. From 2003 to 2009 the Council provided a pontoon for fishing boats in our local lake, Loughaderra, stocked up the lake with fish and improved the water quality in the lake. The area won the Muintir Na Tire Award. The Council established a viable and working Community Alert scheme, a Tuesday Club, set up a fantastic website, negotiated land purchase form the Parish, obtained planning permission for our proposed community hall, carried out heritage projects and equally as important they have ensured that the Ballinotis area was kept clean and tidy - all of which now provides us with a pleasant, lovely and desirable place for all of us to live in. These are just some of the notable projects which have been carried out. Much more has been achieved however the community legacy and spirit has carried on and I have been fortunate as Chairman to inherit that fortune.

In the last year the Council decided to establish objectives for a new phase of development of the Council; those objectives were centered around the overall policy that we should provide the community with sustainable facilities and services going forward.

Our main objectives were agreed as follows:

• Provide a community hall for the benefit and use of all sectors of the community in the locality.
• Provide much needed facilities for our Senior Citizens, disabled persons, disadvantaged families and youth in our area. 
• Provide a centre with varied indoor sport activities in the area for use by everybody during the daytime and evening.
• Improve the heritage and environmental features of the area through our Lake, Tidy Towns and Heritage projects.

Over the year we have had some 28 meetings made up of council meetings, events meetings, subcommittee meetings where our Directors, subcommittee members and members of the community have contributed personally in some form or other to the fantastic advances which we have made. I estimate that some 1100 hours of valuable volunteer personal time was expended to get us to where we are today. Each person will know themselves what they have contributed. Going forward I hope that we can improve on those figures and shares the load more equitably around the Directors and community members. We have our Subcommittees who are always looking for volunteers to drive on their initiatives and please do come and join us.

Besides the attendance at these meetings we have had the support of several volunteers who gave up their personal time and who paid from their own pockets monies needed for the making cakes, road cleaning, cutting of bushes, rubbish collection, erection of signs, stewarding, bucket collecting, raffle collecting, organising the events, knocking on doors selling tickets etc. etc. etc. etc.

On behalf of the community I would like to sincerely thank all of those who contributed their time and personal monies to enable us to achieve our objectives.

Also I would like to especially thank the Parish for the most valuable support which is always readily forthcoming when requested, Muintir Na Tire, Cork County Council, the Garda Siochana, East Cork Athletics Association, Mogeely Vintage Car Society, SECAD, Community Alert, our Sponsors large and small, the Two Mile Inn who allow us to use their facilities, the press and radio – particularly Midleton News, the East Cork Journal and the Echo.

Besides requests for personal time, over the past year we have approached the members of our Community for monies for attendance at the various events which we organised. On every occasion that I know of we have had a fantastic response and each event has accordingly been a great success. We have approached the business community to assist with funding and or prizes for raffles etc. and again we have had a fantastic support. All of those business entities who supported us have been acknowledged and are listed on our website.

Because of the difficult times which we live in we have endeavoured to be modest in our requests for support in the community; we sought to provide value for money and also canvassed money from the business community. We endeavoured to ensure that people could also enjoy themselves at events when they paid for entrance tickets for events. We ensured that the business community were recognised for their generosity. Additionally we found that the majority of people understood that what we are endeavouring to achieve is for the long term – the community hall which we will build will be a centre to be used by all of the community which will not only be available for our generation but for future generations to use and enjoy. Some say why we not built a bigger hall with more services – the answer simply is we will build now only what we can afford and on land which we can afford.

Briefly, we have had the following events, major initiatives and notable achievement over the past year -

• Family Mass: First Sunday after Christmas.
• Lap of the Lake: 27th December.
• Community Alert Dinner December.
• Clean up around the lake in late April and regularly throughout the year.
• Fr. Lawton Concert.
• Ballintotis 4 mile Road Race April.
• Tractor Run – May.
• Collection – Supervalu.
• Curraheen Park fundraiser October.
• Needs analysis as a survey of the whole community on what they thought the community should be providing them with.
• Detailed funding application to Cork County Council for a grant towards construction of the new community hall. This application was led by the Treasurer Padraig O Brien and resulted in CCC granting the considerable sum of € 20,000 towards the construction.
• Preliminary detailed funding application to SECAD for grants towards construction of the new community hall prepared by Deirdre Carr.
• Further development of the excellent website www.ballintotis.com which is run by PRO and webmaster Denis Barry. There is great local news there, it is well worth a visit and is regularly updated.

In organising those events we all learnt a lot which will stand us in good stead going forward.

I mentioned the needs analysis above which was organised and reported on by Deirdre Carr as a survey of every household in our area; since the survey set out the wishes of the majority in the community I believe that the results are worth bringing to your attention again.

Deirdre’s research tells us that 63% of houses in our community have children. Of significant interest is that 50% of household either have now or will have in the next 7 years, teenage children. This tells us the community centre will be most used by teenagers and their parents. Some 20% of houses have only age 65 plus inhabitants, which was our original target market.

The most common family interest was outdoor recreation, which reflects the lack of an indoor facility within the community. It also highlights the need for a meeting location to base these family activities from within the community. The research highlighted the need to use the centre for leisure and evening classes, but requirement for a youth centre was highly requested outside the standard activities we originally envisaged.

There is a high amount of interest and goodwill within the community towards the project and 63% of respondents volunteered time towards the building of the community hall (50% gave names, skills and phone numbers).

The Secretary and Treasurer will provide you with full details of all of the events mentioned above and other matters in their reports.

You will see from the Treasurer’s report that we have made money on all of our fundraising events and we have now got almost 35% of the monies together which we require for construction of the community hall.

So our community have not only a strong financial base going forward into next year but more important we have a determined and capable body working together as a team for a common purpose.

Going forward into next year we would hope to –

• Manage the company in compliance with best practice.
• Complete the purchase of the land.
• Complete planning and building control formalities with Cork County Council.
• Commence construction of the new hall in late spring and complete it is time for Santa Claus – subject to funding.
• .
  Carry on with planned fundraising activities –
• Valentine’s Dance in February at the Two Mile Inn.
• 4 Mile Race. April
• Concert.
• Curraheen Park Fundraiser.
• Funding Application to Government organisations.
• Develop further emphasis on Heritage and Environmental Matters.
• Set up a management team to plan and manage the use of the community hall going forward.
• Support the Citizens Alert initiative and the Tuesday Club or other such initiates.
• Follow up the organisation of a formalised walking route in the area.
• Look at promoting and supporting other sporting activities in the community for all ages.
• Provide training for Directors, members of the community and Volunteers.

We have lots to do; the Directors of the company cannot do all of the above on their own.

It is for sure that we have a considerable amount of good will behind us in the community and we have an ever increasing list of able volunteers willing to give us their personal time.

We need as many volunteer willing hands as we can get to assist us and I can say that when we asked for help from the community over the past year we were never met with negative comment.

I never heard the phrase you “canna” do it or such negative saying from anybody that I spoke to in our community – if I asked for assistance the answer was always “what can we do” and “ do let us know “.