As some of you may recall, we thought it might be a good idea if I sent a short missive round to everyone in the Village on a monthly basis as a way of staying connected and keeping everyone up to date. So here we go with number one.
July was a bit of a miserable one with a nasty run of heavy colds and flu. It’s taken its toll on staff and residents (and our board members). Hopefully August will be a bit kinder. However during July I celebrated my first anniversary with Kerikeri Retirement Village and on reflection I’ve found it a really enjoyable year. It was a big move; new town, new house, new job, and being new to the retirement sector.
I’ve been made to feel so welcome by Village residents, and supported by our fabulous staff through a lot of change for them. I’ve enjoyed getting to know so many of you and look forward to getting to know a lot more (130 staff, 120 residents, 70 volunteers – please forgive me if I haven’t learnt all your names yet).
You will by now all be aware of the first stage of our development and I look forward to letting you know when the soil will be turned to start the apartment blocks. There are a few issues to work through with Council, as you can imagine but we are still aiming for a start at the beginning of November. Thank you to all of those who gave us feedback on the apartments, all of which we took into account.
I’ve been out talking to some of the local business groups and community organisations over the past month about our apartments and plans to grow our services to the Kerikeri community. I’ve met with a really good response and a lot of supportive interest in what we are doing. There’s a lot of affection for Kerikeri Retirement Village.
As another way of keeping a good feedback loop from the board to residents, Jan Gough is now attending board meetings as the chair of the resident’s sub-committee. We hope this results in feedback back to you all via the sub-committee of all the goings on at the board level, and to give us feedback of resident’s concerns.
We’ve got lots going on at the moment, not least upgrading our internal phone systems after our poor old 25 year old one is on its very last legs. We are conscious of trying to keep up with rapidly advancing technology so we can improve our services to Residents both in the Village and in the Care Facility. It’s very hard to keep up with!
We’ve organised a series of speakers in the Social Centre, once a month on a Friday, after having Deputy Mayor Tania McInnes join us last week. These will all be at 10am and please feel free to extend the invitation to come to these to other friends you have outside the Village. We are trying to get a dietitian to come in – but they’re so over-committed so that might not be until the New Year. We have got what we hope is an interesting line up, but I welcome suggestions of others you might like to hear from (details to follow of who is currently booked).
Anyway, that’s enough for now. Talk soon…
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