Rotary Club of Eureka, California

Meeting of the Rotary Club of Eureka

September 30, 2013

Salute and Invocation

Past President Nancy Dean led the flag salute and John Gierek offered a prayer of thanks to our benevolent Creator.

Visiting Rotarians

None

Guests of Rotarians

Murl Harpham introduced our new Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills and wife Cathy. They will soon be relocating from San Diego to Humboldt County.
 We offered a warm welcome and expressed the hope the new chief will join Eureka Rotary.  Greg Gardiner re-introduced his guests, Dr. Kitty Poterack and Arnold Klein.

Announcements

John Bradley needed volunteers for 4:30pm next Thursday at Humboldt Moving and Storage to help with Backpacks for Kids.  Looks like he got them—but anyone else who would like to help can contact John.  Next week Mindy Bussman will be here with a sign-up sheet for the next year.

G If you think of something fun and safe for a teen, call Greg @ 444 9313 (home) or 845 3041 (cell).

reg Williston said our exchange student Daniel Samokhzalov needs some activities to counteract culture shock.

Pat Folkins said our Foundation dinner is November 9^th in Fortuna. More details forthcoming, but save the date.

Greg Gardiner reported to us on the revision of our Bylaws.  Why do we need changes in the Bylaws? Greg said they are not in full compliance with Rotary International, neither aligned with our own Constitution.  Hence his committee has been working hard, making suggestions for changes and submitting them to Jason Eads for legal review.  Recently the revised Bylaws were e-mailed out to all club members. In two weeks we will review changes in the Bylaws during our meeting.  It will likely take 3 weeks to complete these changes and a quorum must be present in order to make them (one third of our total club membership).  Final approval of the Bylaw changes must come from two thirds of our members.

Some of the areas to be changed will be the election of Directors and Officers including the succession of president and dates for elections.  Efforts are also being made to streamline the membership process. “Methuselah would be aged by the time he got through the current membership process,” said Greg. 

 President Ziggy stopped Greg and encouraged him to allow time to admit our newest member, Lisa Corral, who works with the Red Lion Inn as Director of Sales.  Lisa is involved in Soroptimist International and is a mom, wife and grandmother.

Greg then returned to the podium to explain the new streamlined membership process. Our goal is for it to be done in three weeks from start to finish.  Other changes include things like Rotaract members, who “age out” and will be able to become Rotary members with some exemptions from fines and fees.

For complete details on our Bylaws changes, see our Web page.  It has a link titled “Governance Documents.”  This link has our current Bylaws, but also New Draft Bylaws, our Constitution, New Member Applications and other links.

Raffle

Bob Palmrose and Dennis Hunter won today’s raffle.

Program

Steve Justus spoke to us about health care and especially The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.

By October 1, 2013, every business will have to give employees notice that there is available to them a health insurance exchange.  Anyone with fifty full time employees or the equivalent will be required to provide health insurance for those employees.  Steve thought that health care costs might become lower in other states, but not in California.  Open enrollment is going to be from January to March of next year.

What is the California Health Care Exchange?  It exists more or less in cyber-space according to Steve.  It essentially contains a lot of information on laws coming into effect that regulate health care on many levels.  The private market, at least for now, will stay intact with regard to health care and insurance.  However, many changes are coming: for example, the insurers can not ask about pre-existing conditions and they must cover ten essential health benefits.  ACA will also limit the premium increase between young and older clients to 3 times for the latter.  This will lower rates for older folks, but likely increase it for younger ones.  Steve said that this is the biggest social transition we have faced in a very long time.

If you know someone who would make a good Rotarian, bring him or her next week, says President Ziggy. 

Respectfully Submitted,

Dan Price