Aug 26, 2014

Rotary Club of Eureka Burl August 25, 2014

Lunch Menu: Salad bar, sweet potatoes, ham, turkey/dressing, carrots, rolls, dessert. Called to order by President Gregg Gardiner at 12:30pm.The Pledge of Allegiance was led by former US Marine Corp Captain, Bruce Rupp. The Invocation was led by Steven Justus. Wayne Wilson is back in the hospital and not receiving visitors. Steve Beckman is back in Granada but doing better.

VISITING ROTARIANS: Liana Simpson- Old Town, Jeff Pauli- Old Town (Bert Campton fined President Gregg $25 for mispronouncing Liana’s name as Lisa. Then, President Gregg fined Bert Campton $25 for mispronouncing Liana’s name as Lisa when he fined President Gregg. Neither side would budge on the fine. They tried to get the club to vote but most members abstained.) GUESTS OF ROTARIANS: Ted Loring brought Scott Loring, Carlton brought Rachel Burns from Redwood Teen Challenge, Mike Cunningham brought his son-in-law Andre who is moving back to Eureka, Tom Schallert brought Susan Tissot the Executive Director of the Humboldt Botanical Gardens, Dick Storre introduced his wife, Debbie. STUDENT GUESTS: Our new exchange student Lisa from Belgium has arrived. Today was her first day of school so she won’t be joining us until the next meeting. Lisa still needs a 3rd host family for her stay with the club. FOUNDATION MINUTE: Mike Cunningham provided today’s meeting filling in for Keith Crossley who hurt his back. Rotary Foundation began over 100 years ago with a donation of $26.50 from Rotary International President, Arch C. Klumph. Mike pointed out that money alone could not accomplish the many things the Foundation does. It also takes service from the many committed Rotarians who live throughout the world. BIRTHDAYS: J Hockaday, Jill McDonald, Steven McHaney, David Wells, Ted Welton ANNIVERSARIES: Russ Harris he was already recognized last week so President Gregg let him sit back down unscathed.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Tom McMurray said that Redwood Teen Challenge is holding an annual dinner/fundraiser at the Arcata Community Center on Sept. 9th at 6pm. Tickets are $25 and tables for 8 are available. President Gregg reminded the club that Redwood Teen Challenge has contributed a lot to the Winship Project and will be contributing a lot to the Boys and Girls Club project. President Gregg updated us on the Boys and Girls Club project… The new roof will be put on next week. The painting has been finished to remove all lead-based paints… things are moving forward. Sign Smith applications are due October 1st. Applications are on line. Grants generally run in the $30 to $35,000 range. If you know of a non-profit that has a project that fits, encourage them to apply. It’s time to vote on the Board of Director’s for next year. Ballots were passed out. Carlton reported on the Rotary Exchange Student rafting trip. He BBQ’d for 115 kids, parents, etc. on Saturday night. It was a great event. Russ Harris provided all of the salmon for the BBQ. Bruce Rupp, sporting a t-Shirt promoting KEET TV was asked to stand up by President Gregg and tell us what that’s all about. Bruce invited everyone to join KEET TV. It costs as little as $5 a month. KEET has to raise $800,000 or they will no longer be on the North Coast. If you enjoy watching KEET please join. President Gregg held up spare change canisters that have the message, Spare Change to Change the World with the Rotary emblem. Rotarians are all asked to take one and bring it back filled up. Then you can get a new one to fill again. We are committed to contribute $120 perm member this year to the Foundation. If you want to put the canisters out at your business you can get extra ones to do that with. RECOGNITIONS: President Gregg asked all Directors of the Boys and Girls Club to stand. The board has committed funds that more than match Rotary’s contribution to the renovation project as part of their commitment to Boys and Girls Club. Dale Warmuth and ? stood up in recognition of their commitment to the Boys and Girl’s Club. Wendy Purnell was asked to stand. Wendy recently took an out of town trip with members of her golf team to compete against 20+ teams. Wendy’s team took 1st place. Her first place cost her a $25 donation to the club. Anyone that has traveled overseas this summer was asked to stand. Up went Dennis Hunter who went on a cruise of the Mediterranean including his favorite, Italy. Cost him $25. Dale Warmuth went to New Zealand for a fine of $100, Tom McMurray went to Norway because his daughter got married. He made the mistake of telling the club that he only had to pay for the dress and flowers. His in laws picked up the rest of the costs. That cost him $100. ROTARIAN OF THE MONTH: Steve Lafferty received a framed certificate from President Gregg thanking him for his consistent, hard work in setting up the club each week, keeping attendance tabs and emailing each Rotarian each week. SPENGLER-HOWARD RAFFLE: A bottle of Riverbend Cellars wine was won by Scott Loring. Bruce Rupp drew from the deck of cards for the joker with no success. The pot now stands at $230.

GUEST SPEAKER INTRODUCTION BY: Bruce Emad. College of the Redwoods (CR) President Kathy Smith started at CR in May of 2012, at a very dark time for CR. There were sanctions against the school, finances were horrible, etc. Today’s report will be very different. Kathy’s background was as President of Mendocino College for many years and prior to that worked for 11 years at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, Colo. She earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the University of Kansas and a master of business administration (MBA) at the University of New Mexico. She has been a CPA since 1978. GUEST SPEAKER: Kathy started off with a few statistics about Community Colleges. In total there are 112 community colleges in California with over 2 million students as opposed to 23 California State University colleges and 10 University of California colleges. She provided some interesting handouts with other statistics. Today College of the Redwoods has no sanctions. They have a mid-term report due in mid October. Assuming they pass that with no problems there will be no review required for 3 to 4 years. The recommended budget reserves are 5% of the annual budget. When Kathy arrived at CR their reserves were at 2%. Today those reserves total 5.3% and they expect to meet their goal of having reserves totaling 5.4% at the end of this year. Those achievements came at the cost of 33 people that she had to lay off and the hard hard work of existing employees who were committed to making CR succeed. There are a lot of reporting requirements that take a lot of time and her staff works hard to meet those requirements. They have built 3 new buildings… Science, Humanities, Administrative/Student support. Those buildings are being fully utilized. However, the old buildings on campus are sitting idle and are too expensive to retrofit because they are so old. However, the buildings need to be maintained to stay safe, which costs money. They can utilize the buildings for non-student activities. They did rent one to PG&E who will be expanding their rental needs this year. That has been a great experience. The PG&E employees also eat at the Cafeteria, which helps with sales at the Cafeteria. CR’s Mendocino Campus is being transferred to Mendocino College. It’s too far and too expensive to keep up. It doesn’t make sense. The Nursing classes are full with a waiting list of 200 students but there is no budget to increase and even if they did, she’s not sure there are jobs to support the additional students that would be coming out. Kathy invited all Rotarians to come to the 50th anniversary celebrations on October 4th from 4-6pm at College of the Redwoods. It will be a fun time. MEETING ADJOURNED: 1:30pm. Alicia Cox

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