February 2009

The Manitoba Association of Cottage Owners Inc. (MACO) wish to welcome you to our new website at www.macoman.com !

We have changed our domain name to help make it easier to remember our link on the web. We have also updated our format to allow for more information and much more current information on the web. We felt that as a professional organization, we have a responsibility to keep you, the reader, more up to date with our activities.

The new format should help you to locate the information that you need much faster and easier. We are trying to set it up so even those who use dial-up as their source of internet can quickly and enjoyably keep up to date, and see what is going on with MACO. This way, whether you are at the lake, or at your urban home, you can have quick access to MACO information.

We hope that more people will use our contact information to send us information, pictures or concerns they may have. We can only help those that notify us of issues. There are new pages of membership information and links to resources and partners of MACO that should help to serve you better.

There will be a section dedicated to the war against school tax on property. We hope to encourage support from all Manitobans by giving them the tools to understand the unfairness and extent of the problem with the current tax scheme, which is the worst in Canada for funding education. This is a roots topic that caused the formation of MACO Inc. by cottagers in Manitoba in 1992.

Along with all of this, we are planning to have an archive that will allow people to download past presentations by guests at our Annual General Meetings or regular meetings to help you enjoy cottage life better, understand environmental concerns better, and to encourage you to attend our Annual General Meetings by seeing what you missed.

We continue our hard work looking after cottagers in Manitoba on many fronts. We are involved in the Pointe Du Bois Modernization project by Manitoba Hydro. Our participation in the hearings is to help avoid many problematic issues that could impact hundreds of cottagers along and near the Winnipeg River project. We have also put some people in touch with Hydro for the Keeyask Project Hearings.

MACO remains involved with the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium (LWRC), working with Conservation Districts, participating on the Tembec Sustainable Forest Advisory Management committee, the Parks and District Service Fee Hearings and dealing with other cottage association issues and environment issues. These are just some of the many ways that MACO is there for all cottagers in Manitoba. With the information on the website, there should be little question of what we are doing for cottagers, wherever they might be located. If you have any questions, we certainly hope you can take the time to email or phone us with the information on this new site.

Membership keeps us strong, and to stay here working for you, we need your membership fees. Remember, the Directors that do all this work for you are 100% volunteers, and work very hard all year. There should be at least one item of concern we are working on, that would justify your continued support of MACO.

Sincerely,

Dave Crabb,

President