We look forward to the General Membership Meeting every year and want to thank everyone who attended; it was the best attendance we’ve had in recent years.

As always, we enjoyed gathering together to share ideas, hear your thoughts and acknowledge achievements from the past year.  For those of you who couldn’t join us, here are some of the highlights:

• Board of Directors (the Board) elections
  • The following individuals were elected to serve another term on the Board:  Dan Anderson, Mike Baaso, Will Carlton, Mike Featherngill, Dan Higham
  • We’d like to welcome newcomers Justin Buck, Jennifer Conte, Steve Cordle, Nicole Francis, Josh Goldstein, Dan Kwiatkowski and Chris Lagerstrom who were also selected to serve on the Board
  • The following individuals remain on the Board serving the second year of their term:  Peter Morgan, Nancy Warner, John Weng and Chris White

• Board of Directors – Executive Board
  • Directly after the new Board of Directors is selected, the first order of business is selecting the Executive Board for the upcoming season
    • President: Mike Featherngill
    • Vice-President: Dan Anderson
    • Treasurer: John Weng
    • Secretary: Chris White

• Departing Board of Director Members
  • We’d like to extend a special thank you to Andy O’Brien (10 years) and Lisa Wood (9 years), who decided not to return this year, for their dedicated service to the Livonia Hockey Association and always striving to make the LHA a better place for our players, coaches and families.  The Association could not function without volunteers like Andy and Lisa who selflessly devote an extraordinary amount of time and effort to ensure everything runs smoothly throughout the year including all the LHA sponsored events such as Picture Day, Family Fun Day and Hockey Day
  • Lee Dodds (2 years) will also not be returning to the Board this year, nor will Laila Horgan (2 years).  We will miss their passion and dedication for making our Association great and wish them well in the future

• Communication
  • Better communication between the LHA and our members is always a topic of discussion at the General Membership meeting.  Avenues of communication were also discussed with members indicating they’d like to see more frequent updates of the LHA Facebook page and possibly other methods, such as text messaging, be utilized by the LHA
  • In response to our members concerns the Board has decided to create a Director of Communications role to act as a focal point with our members and community

• Additional topics
  • The request was made for various avenues of non-team based training sessions (sticks &  pucks, skating, skill skates, etc.).  Parents would like the opportunity to attend these skill building activities at a Livonia rink, rather than go to another associations event
  • Timing of responses with respect to compassionate fund requests (which are reviewed at monthly Board meetings); suggestion to have the discussions take place independently of Board meetings
  • With the strength of the younger teams, how is the LHA working to retain the membership at the older age groups

As always we are excited about the potential the upcoming season holds and look forward to serving our LHA members and the community to make sure we achieve our mission – To provide the best possible experience for all participants by encouraging, developing, advancing and administering the sport of ice hockey.