THE Home Hill Chamber of Commerce has made major changes to its meeting procedures to encourage more participation by members and supporters—but so far, it has not been a total success. The first meeting under the changes in April did attract a stronger attendance, mainly because there was interest from the community on the future of the town and the need for something to be done to correct a situation where the town has numerous vacant buildings in its Central Business District, but few are available because of their poor condition—or because absent landlords have gone into receivership.
However, the May meeting was disappointing for the lack of attendance, even though the Chamber had arranged positive speakers on two subjects that are of major benefit to our town. One was the Production Superintendent of Inkerman Mill, Chris Scovazzi, who spoke about the mill’s progress ahead of the start of the forthcoming harvest in June.
The other speakers were Home Hill High School Principal, Frank Kingma and School teacher, Louise Nicholas, who expanded on the school’s major agricultural project including recent developments in Horticultural Education.
Both were of huge interest to the town, with Wilmar spending multi-millions on upgrading Inkerman Mill while the High School has received an unprecedented half a million dollars from the state government towards their new agricultural program—who would have believed any level of government could have found that much for anything in Home Hill based on the town’s past experiences?
Next month, one of the planned speakers will be from the Ayr Refund Depot for the Containers for Change—All towns were promised a depot when the program was introduced but once again Home Hill missed out and the Ayr Depot’s representatives are coming to explain how they help our town—but will it mean we could have a depot of our own in the near future?
The attendance of a greater number of members at the next Chamber meeting at the Home Hill Community Sports Club at 5.30pm on Wednesday, June 15, would help the Chamber in its efforts to get a positive result for Home Hill—or will it have to be a political campaign ahead of the next state election?