Report of the Communications Committee to the
Thetis Island Residents’ & Ratepayers’ Association
for the General Members Meeting
June 29th, 2023

The Communications committee now comprises:
	Espokes
	thetisisland.net
	the Phone Book
	the Visitors’ Guide
	Welcome Package

Espokes has had to change its mailing service, due to changes in what the former carrier, TinyLetters, was prepared to handle. As there is at least one eSpokes message a day all year, to almost 700 recipients, this constitutes heavy traffic and has begun to cost something to use an application that allows for that level of traffic. With MailerLite, the best low price setup we could find, this currently costs $108 US per year.   Huge thanks to the committee and especially Claire and Matt Hess, for the task of finding and adapting espokes to the new program.

thetisisland.net is fortunate in being grandfathered into a low-cost program, so the cost for keeping it online for all the various community users is about Cdn$165 a year.  If this program ceases to apply, the cost could at least double, but we’ve had this for almost 20 years now.

The Phone Book will be renewed as soon as I can get to it, possibly by the end of the year.  I was hoping we could get the post office box numbers settled before doing a new one, but perhaps the only way to make that happen is to put the old numbers in print.  We’ll see how the situation develops.

The Visitors’ Guide was published once again this year, and has been distributed to various tourist outlets, including BC Ferries, and various on-island businesses.   This year’s version is linked from the Visitors page on thetisisland.net

The Welcome Packages are available to be distributed to new islanders as we become aware of them.  Apply to tirra@thetisisland.net if you know where one would be appropriate.

Any other questions, let me know at veronicashelford@gmail.com.

Veronica Shelford