MINUTES of the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING held at 18.30 hours in the COMMUNITY CENTRE on Thursday, 28 October 2004

Present:           Jan Rennison (Chairperson), Kath Allen (Secretary),

                        28 Residents (including 5 Street Co-ordinators).

Apologies:       Gerald & Denise Mills (Main Co-ordinators), Pat & Roger Hooton.

Jan opened the meeting by thanking those who had taken time to attend, and explained that in view of her husband’s ill-health, she was unable to give sufficient time to continue as Chairperson, requesting nominations for the positions of Chairperson and also for Secretary and Main Co-ordinator.  However, no nominations were forthcoming.

Complaints have been received regarding youngsters using skateboards, both on the main road through the urbanisation and also some of the side roads and on the children’s playground.  Several residents have approached the offenders advising them of the dangers of this practice, but have been met with abuse and rudeness.  The Police have been approached but say that they can do nothing (until an accident occurs!) because the use of skateboards is not illegal.

Tony Chapman (street co-ordinator) spoke of his disillusionment with the Police, following a burglary at his house, when he visited the Police Station on 3 or 4 occasions and they refused to take his Denuncia.  Other residents are also disillusioned for several reasons, the main one being lack of Police presence recently.  However, Peter (833) told the meeting that Police are patrolling in unmarked cars and that the President of the Community was actually stopped at 2am one morning, whilst walking round with another member of the committee, and challenged by one of these unmarked patrols.

Jan & Kath attended the quarterly meeting of NHW at the Town Hall on 14 October 2004 but unfortunately the Police Chief was unavailable as there was a major incident at Pilar which he had to attend.  However, Chris Poole – Chairperson of Orihuela NHW, promised to take up the matter of the refused Denuncia with the Police on our behalf.  Jan will contact Chris to follow this up and also to ask if it would be possible for someone from the Police to meet with representatives of our urbanisation to discuss the problems.  Jan did explain that because victims of crimes are not reporting them to NHW co-ordinators, consequently they assume that we no longer have a problem.  She also pointed out that under Spanish Law, the Police are not allowed to provide feedback to NHW on action taken against offenders.

Only 20 incidents have been reported between June and September (none at all in August).

Julie (542) suggested that we put a notice on the Dream Hills website, informing rental clients of the rules and regulations of both the urbanisation and the swimming pools areas, and giving details of security measures that must be taken to safeguard both the properties and themselves.  Kath will forward this to the website owner for inclusion.

There being no other business, Jan reminded the meeting that nominations for Chairperson, Secretary and Main Co-ordinator are still urgently required, otherwise NHW can no longer function.

KEA                                                                                                                              29 October 2004.