The Dons Trust Board (DTB) held an additional meeting this month to cover matters not covered in the previous regular monthly meeting. The meeting was held on Monday 30th October at the Cherry Red Records Stadium. Ahead of publication of the redacted minutes, this article summarizes the main points discussed.
The meeting was attended by DTB members Matthew Breach, Mark Davis, Tim Hillyer, Colin Dipple, Roger Evans, Jane Lonsdale, Nigel Higgs and Sean McLaughlin; DT Secretariat members Tom Brown, Hannah Kitcher and Andrew Howell; FCB members Erik Samuelson and Ivor Heller; and stadium project manager Andrew Williams. Apologies were received from David Growns and Charles Williams.
The first section of the meeting was dedicated to an update regarding the status of the stadium following the areas and terms identified as requiring a conclusion from the previous DTB meeting. Headway has been made between the three separate parties (Galliard, the London Borough of Merton and ourselves) however, in the short time since the last DTB meeting, Erik Samuelson could not report to the DTB that all outstanding terms had yet been resolved.
In anticipation of an agreement regarding the stadium, the DTB revisited the stadium plans under the steer of Andrew Williams. The purpose of this was to discuss the viability of certain additional options for the stadium that have been provisionally costed, as well as to provide an update to the DTB to ensure that the design plans remain on course as anticipated. All additional options were scrutinised in detail. Under the guidance of Andrew, those options considered unviable for commercial reasons, or otherwise, were disposed of, with the remaining options to be specified and costed in further detail by the contractor.
This was followed by the DTB discussing the Sponsorship Survey compiled by Tom Brown which 346 people had participated in. Andrew departed before this section of the meeting. The DTB was unanimous in its interpretation of the results in that participants were found to be against any form of sponsorship from companies associated with arms manufacturing, tobacco, pornography, payday loan companies and political or religious organisations. However further interpretation and consideration of the results was needed in relation to alcohol and betting companies. Given the length of time that had been spent on preceding topics, the discussions had to be cut short; however a DTB vote on sponsorship will be conducted in the coming days.
A general discussion regarding sponsorship was still held, and the general comments from the survey’s participants were discussed, allowing Ivor Heller to take some feedback away from the meeting for the benefit of the FCB.
The meeting concluded with an update regarding the COO recruitment process.