Smart Growth for Ossington was a casual grouping with no formal structure, operating on a strictly emergency basis, and ‘led’ (if you can call it that) by me for an ad hoc purpose, namely getting bodies to T-B Rec Centre on June 25.
The Ossington Community Association, by contrast, is, by design, an entirely Robert’s Rules-compliant Society — bylaws, formal membership rolls, well-defined leadership and committee structure, elected leadership — with the object of promoting the flourishing of the neighbourhood (above Queen to Harrison, Crawford to Dovercourt) and its business districts (the Ossington Strip and the Dundas Bend).
Detailed information on OCA is available at ossingtoncommunity.ca.
At present the OCA is operating under provisional bylaws, led by a provisional executive board. We are about to roll out our summer membership drive — cost free for all residents of the neighbourhood, nearly all concerns operating in the business districts, and friends of the neighbourhood: watch your mailbox for our literature. Once the membership rolls are sufficiently expansive to warrant a first general meeting, OCA will “de-provisionalize” its bylaws and exec board, and be established as an entirely regular Community Association.
The relation between SGO and OCA is this. (1) SGO has wound up its operations and transferred its intellectual property to OCA: this transition occurred on 3 July, the day OCA was chartered, voted in its provisional bylaws, and elected its provisional exec board. (2) There is, of course, significant overlap between the exec board of OCA and some of the more active participants in SGO: the membership of the provisional exec board is available in the ‘OCA structure’ file linked at ossingtoncommunity.ca. But OCA has already expanded its membership well beyond the group more active in SGO — indeed, we see a “big tent” approach as essential to our object of promoting the flourishing of the neighbourhood and its business districts. (3) OCA is, in light of this overlap and the transfer of intellectual property, continuing some of the principal projects of SGO: though it is once again worth stressing that while actions of SGO were those of the individual members gathered under that name, actions of OCA are, in light of bylaw restrictions, permissions, and mandates, representative of the will of the membership.