RRFA amends constitution

By Ken Johnston
Editor

As with so many organizations, declining numbers has forced the Rainy River Federation of Agriculture (RRFA) to make constitutional changes.
Saturday evening the RRFA held their 35th annual meeting in Stratton and topping the agenda were three changes to their governing doctrine. The biggest change was made to their representation structure.
Previously there had been four zones with two members from each. They were Zone 1 (Atwood, Spohn, Pratt, Curran, Worthington, McCrosson, Wild Land Reserve, Blue and Morson), Zone 2 (Dilke, Tovell, Sifton, Nelles, Morley, Deward, Sutherland, Patullo and Mattieu), Zone 3 (Shenston, Rowe, Barwick, Potts, Tait, Cromme, Dobie, Menary, Richardson, Roseberry and Mather) and Zone 4 (Aylsworth, Kingsford, Devlin, Roddick, McIrvine, Lash, Flemming, Buriss, Crozier, Carpenter, Woodyatt, Dance and Misscampbell). However, the past few years the RRFA has had trouble filling all its board seats. At Saturday’s annual meeting there were still two vacancies on the board, having been left up to the elected executive members to try and fill with no success.
Two options were proposed to try and make the election process more productive.
Option one was to go to two zones with two reps. from each of them and then two reps. elected at large. Zone 1 would be West end from Rainy River to Morley Chapple line and Zone 2 would be From Morley Chapple line to Fort Frances.
Option two was to elect six board members at large.
Both options also include electing a President, Secretary and a Treasurer.
Both options were put on the floor for discussion and in the end the second option was approved.
Other constitutional changes saw the annual meeting date changed from prior to Oct. 31st to no later than Nov. 15th. The structure of a quorum for board meetings was also reworked. It originally required 1/2+1 of the elected zone directors. Now it is 1/2+1 of the elected directors plus the President.
Once the constitutional amendments were completed elections were held for six members at large, president, secretary and treasurer.
Incumbent President, Bernie Zimmerman, was acclaimed.
Incumbent Secretary, Linda Armstrong, was acclaimed.
Incumbent Treasurer, Angela Halverson, was acclaimed.
Of the six board members at large, the four current board members still had one year left in their term of office. Kristine Carpenter, Craig Sargent, Dan Teeple and Lisa Teeple will continue to serve. Nominations were opened up with Jeff Pollard, Jason Teeple, Ken Mason and Jack Vandenbrand all suggested. But all of them declined the nomination. In the end, despite the constitutional changes, the board was left in the same situation it was before, with two vacancies that it will now have to try and fill.
President Zimmerman was also acclaimed as the delegate to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture annual meeting with Lisa Teeple being his alternate.
Peter Aalbers was also nominated to be the regional OFA Policy Advisory Council Rep.