Opinions needed on a dashboard design [on hold]

Here's a VERY stripped down version of a dashboard design with some changes to protect it and the company it is for. I need a few opinions.

1) We currently have an ongoing debate over notifications. One of our team members thinks we need the notifications right on the dashboard/home page and should not just have the bell icon with an indicator. Currently the notifications are just that; there will be minimal "action items" that users will be presented with. So, e.g., it would be like "Jane made changes to X", "John added an event", etc. Is it useful to surface notifications on the dashboard even with a bell icon/indicator that will be global? My concern is how many notifications could appear; it could be a lot, including a lot of things that aren't very actionable. Still, I'm open to getting some opinions.

2) Infinite scroll vs. Load More scroll. One of our team members feels infinite scroll can be buggy and give the impression that users have reached the end when they haven't. S/he prefers a "load more" button to trigger viewing more items. Any thoughts on that?

3) This isn't shown in the design above but is it redundant or useful to show a list of users or a roster (when this list is available) when you click on a main navigation item titled "users" or "roster"?

Again trying to not reveal the product or company etc. so apologies for the vagueness!