Kitimat Understanding the Environment, the non-profit society which operates the recycling depot in the Service Centre is potentially on its last threads.
The society issued a notice last Friday which announced all of the existing board members will resign following May 26, the date of the society’s annual general meeting.
It was said each board member had decided to resign independently.
The AGM will be held at the library at 7 p.m.
The Society Act requires a minimum of three officers on the board. If not then KUTE loses its society status.
The conclusion to all of that would mean the recycling depot would close down.
“We encourage the citizens of Kitimat to step up and volunteer to keep the Society and the Recycling Depot going. Please direct any inquiries to kitimatrecycle@gmail.com.”
One of KUTE’s current directors says the decisions to resign were personal, which essentially lead to this perfect storm of having no one left at the end. There are only three people on the board at the moment.
“What happened was I got sick, and to reduce the amount of stress I have in my life I’m shedding some of the more onerous responsibilities I have, one of them being KUTE,” said Ken Maitland. “There are times where we’re having to deal with stuff multiple times a week. That was jus added stress I didn’t need.”
Another director had health issues in their extended family which took their focus, and it left the majority of work on to Barb Hall, KUTE’s president.
“That’s a lot of stress on her,” said Maitland.
He said the directors spoke with a lawyer to figure out the best way to go forward and it was recommended they go public on the need to give people time to understand the importance of the society and for people to step in.
“What [the lawyer] recommended is announce resignations well in advance to try to explain to community what the consequences will be, see if [we] can round up more members to step forward.
Closing the depot would also put four employees out of work.
“If you have enough people it’s manageable,” said Maitland, adding, “This series of circumstances that make it difficult with all of these projects going on, resulted in a very high turnover. We were regularly having to go search for people, interview people, hire people, go through that whole process.”
Constant fundraising was also part of the job, he said. With KMP ramping down things might get easier, but if LNG has FIDs work will go up too.