Dear Members,

I would like to take a moment to thank all frontline workers, community volunteers, Councillors and staff that have been working tirelessly from the onset of this pandemic. Their work and commitment have truly made a positive difference in Curve Lake and for those living within it.

First and foremost, Chief and Council remain committed to transparency and openness. There are a number of issues that came together through February and into March that were compounded when we began dealing with the pandemic. Prior to this, Council had been moving to share recorded Council meetings online. Initially the recordings were shared on Social Media, but going forward the recorded meetings will move to be shared exclusively in the Curve Lake Members portal. To allow time for this transition and for any members who have not yet signed up for the members portal, we will leave all recorded meetings up on the Curve Lake website.

When the necessity for social distancing became apparent in the middle of March, we moved our meetings to a virtual platform. We have not yet made a decision on whether the recordings of these meetings will be able to be shared, or how much editing will need to take place to make them usable and to ensure the privacy of individuals information. We remain committed to sharing recordings of the Council meetings, but must assess what that looks like with our virtual platform. As such, this can take the form of sharing only the audio component, again, for privacy concerns. For now, all recorded meetings prior to our virtual meetings starting in the middle of March, will be shared on the Curve Lake website. We will provide an update when we have made a decision if and how we can share the virtual meetings. The minutes will be shared in the usual manner.

We also acknowledge that there has been a delay in sharing the Minutes of our Council meetings. We sent out a special newsletter with the Council Minutes for February 17, March 2, March 23, March 30 and Emergency Council on April 3, 2020 and will continue to share the minutes as they are approved in our regular newsletter. April 6th Minutes will be shared in the May 29th newsletter.

We would also like to take this opportunity to share with you that our member document portal is currently being updated to a new system. As a result, access to documents will not be possible to aid in this transition. The new portal is scheduled for completion sometime in early June and will include all approved minutes when it is operational. For those members that haven’t already registered, we strongly encourage you to email our Communications Officer, Mile Lazarevski at communication@curvelake.ca.

If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Mile.

Sincerely,

Chief Emily Whetung