Let's spend more money

I have two meetings to attend this evening, both to do with Lions.  first, there is a meeting of the management committee of the Lions Housing Society (which I might very well end up having to chair).  This will be a short meeting - they generally are - in which the report and accounts for the year ended 31st December will be considered and approved (I hope).  We, by which I mean the Society, had another very successful year with the accounts showing a surplus of just under £600,000.  Mind you, £350,000 of that was a donation from a charitable trust which was wound up.  We now have enough funds in the bank to put towards another development - when we find a suitable site - and always provided the bank will lend us the rest, about £3 million at a guesstimate.  That should mean another 20-30 flats to add to our present stock of 116, all let to people of retirement age at affordable rents.

Lions Dene is one of the Housing Society's developments.  It includes a doctors' surgery and a meeting room for the Lions Club as well as 37 flats and an office used by the nurses of Leo House Children's Hospice in the Home.

Then after that, a business meeting of the Lions Club.  I hope to get the club's agreement to spend another £3,000+ on a number of projects.  I want to subsidise holidays for four disabled Brighton residents, buy sleeping bags for a charity working with the homeless in the city, buy art materials for a charity working with abused women, donate £275 to MedicAlert's Early Start programme for children under 10, and £250 to Lions Clubs International Foundation scheme to provide measles vaccinations.