The Clary Lake Association’s 2023 Annual Meeting went off without a hitch yesterday afternoon at the Clary Lake dam. The weather was perfect and attendance was normal with close to 40 people showing up. Elections were held: Gareth Bowen is our new President, Steve Relyea is starting his second term as Vice President, George Fergusson is starting his 6th two-year term as Secretary, and Mary Gingrow-Shaw is starting her 5th (and final)  two-year term as Treasurer. Outgoing President Dave Knight and Kathryn Ference are both starting their 1st terms on the Board. Mary did an excellent job (as usual!) presenting the 2022/2023 financial report (our fiscal year ends on July 31st).

The main program was a lively presentation by Malcolm Burson about our new LakeSmart Program. He also handed out our very first LakeSmart Award to David & Janette Hodsdon and  our first commendation awards to Charlene Andersen and Cheryl Smith, and June Lordi. Steve Cowles gave an excellent Dam Operations Committee Report, George Fergusson reported on our CBI and Water Quality Monitoring programs, and Margaret Fergusson reported on the Events Committee. I’ll leave the rest of the meeting details for the meeting minutes and I’ll be posting more pictures from the meeting shortly.

I can’t move on without commenting on the featured image at the top of this post. You’ll notice everyone is paying rapt attention to whatever is it our outgoing President Dave Knight is talking about… except for the two lovely ladies on the far right, Melissa Palmer-Karas and Gayle Knight, who were hamming it up for the camera 🙂

The 2023 Raffle is Over!

We held the drawing at the conclusion of the meeting. The winner of the Masterbuilt Digital Charcoal Grill + Smoker was Cheryl Willis, she lives over on North Clary Road in Jefferson. The Winner of the L.L. Bean gift card was Linda Gallion, she and Rick Gallion run the Clary Lake Bed & Breakfast. The winner of the Reny’s gift card was Geraldine Hull (wife of Paul Barton), new owners of a home over on Duncan Road, and the winner of the Sheepscot General gift certificate was Lee Sledjeski (a friend of our new President, Gareth Bowen). There was an additional 5th prize made and graciously donated by Linda Clark, wife of Alan Clark, a lovely sun catcher and a pendant made with real flowers (picture at left). This unexpected lovely final runner up prize was won by Steve Cowles daughter-in-law, Jess Puth.

We’ll be collecting the grill from Louis Doe Garden Center this coming week and delivering it to it’s new home.

All told this we raised $2335 for our Dam Repair Fund (considerably more than with last year’s raffle!) bringing the Dam Repair fund balance to an impressive $26,310. We would like to thank EVERYONE who bought tickets this year for helping support our dam repair efforts. We’ll continue to raise money until we have enough to start work on the dam.