Hello everyone,

Time for another update on the reopening of the club. The Executive continues to follow the leads of BowlsBC, Bowls Canada, and the District of Oak Bay and have developed guidelines for the club to reopen. I will list the salient points of the next steps that we need to have in place before we can start bowling.

• The guideline that we have prepared have been approved by the Executive and I will be sending them for comments to BowlsBC (I will send them out to all and post them to the website once we get any comments back from BowlsBC). Once we get any comments back from BowlsBC, the District of Oak Bay wants a copy for their record. I have has discussions with Oak Bay and they are prepared for us to start once we have procedures and the supporting organizations (Viasport and BowlsBC) behind us. 
• Insurance – BowlsBC provides Directors and Officers Liability Insurance for all of its clubs. It currently runs out on May 31^st, 2020 and the current provider has put in a Contagion Exclusion that does not cover the Clubs for Covid-19 lawsuits. The new policy for June 1, 2020 still has these exclusions in it and so BowlsBC has strongly recommended that no club start bowling until this is resolved. This issue is currently the major roadblock in front of us now.
• The procedures for Phase 1 (Practice and coaching) we have developed mimic most of the clubs in the area and stress social distancing and proper sanitation. It requires that there are no visitors allowed, confirmed booking (online) for all bowling (ie, there will be no casual bowling where you show up and expect to bowl), and that you must sign a medical form saying you don’t have any respiratory issues, etc. It also requires us to have safety monitors in place to ensure that we have the accountably processes in place should a case appear. To this end we will need some volunteers to be present at all of our scheduled slots. I will be putting a call out for volunteers once we have got the details of the online bookings and time slots sorted. I expect these procedure to be in place for at least Phase 1. Once we move into Phase 2 (where we can have daily draws and club tournaments), we will have to re-evaluate our procedures.
• I am still hoping for a mid-June start, but it really depends on others and the insurance issue.
• Thank you all for renewing your memberships for this year. This has allowed out club to be in a good financial position this year. We have 112 full time members renewed and with the other memberships our total now is 134. This is a great result and this has allowed us to go forward in a healthy financial manner.
• For those not renewing your memberships, I encourage you to do so, however this email list and access to the members only page will cease by mid-June. Please think about renewing.

Thank you for your patience and with some more hard work we can get bowling soon!

Ron

Ron Harmer 

President Oak Bay Lawn Bowling Club

250-370-1582