Lennoxville Residents’ Association disbands
The Lennoxville Residents’ Association (LRA) is no more. Having once counted as many as 1,300 members, the citizens’ advocacy group has made the decision to formally disband after several years of inactivity.
“We haven’t done much in the last few years,” said Tim Belford, one of the founding members of the group and a longtime member of its executive committee. “There was less and less reason for us to be active.”
The LRA first formed in 2012 in response to a plan by then Mayor of Sherbrooke Bernard Sévigny to reduce the number of councilors in the city, out of concern that reduced representation would lead to a loss of the community’s voice in municipal affairs.
“Its time has come and gone,” Belford said noting that although Sévigny’s plan did eventually preserve Lennoxville when it went ahead in 2017, much of the centralization of services that the organization was concerned about went ahead anyway.
Steve Pankovitch, who served as president of the association for much of its time in operation, said that the decision to dissolve the organization officially was a combination of recent inactivity and the administrative elements of being a formally recognized group.
“We were just paying fees to the government out of funds donated by the membership, and not much else,” the former president said, explaining that with the dissolution, the remaining $175 the organization had in its account was donated to Community Aid.
Like Belford, Pankovitch said that he doesn’t feel like there is a pressing need for the LRA’S presence in the local political sphere at this point in time. Looking back on the organization’s work over the years, however, he painted a slightly more positive picture of outcomes. Specifically, he underlined the role the group played in borough beautification.
Asked if the association might not have a role to play in the current conversation around the bilingual status of municipalities and with a municipal election coming up in the fall, Pankovitch argued that the formal dissolution of the group should not be seen as a sign that its past members no longer care or have forgotten how to speak up if they need to.
“Our voices are still here, they’re just not formally here,” he said,
differentiating between the ability to meet and advocate for an issue as a group, and doing so through the official structure of an organization.
Belford, meanwhile, suggested that if the group was to rally around a cause again, it would need to find a way to bring in new membership and
leadership.
“A couple of us are getting beyond helping,” he said, noting that between younger members being busy with work and home life and older members beginning to feel the challenges of age, it was getting more difficult to get together in any kind of regular way.