LUNCH MENU: Salad bar, Meatloaf, Noodles with red sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, rolls, dessert. Called to order by President Gregg Gardiner at 12:30pm. THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE was led by guest, Capt. Mark Neeson USN (retired). THE INVOCATION was led by Gary Todoroff. VISITING ROTARIANS: Liana Simpson, Old Town Rotary.
GUESTS OF ROTARIANS: Carlton brought Hawley Butterfield, Gregg Gardiner brought Capt. Mark Neeson USN (retired), J. Hockaday introduced Torrance Gaucher, new meteorologist for News Channel 3. STUDENT GUESTS: None. NEW MEMBER: Hawley Butterfield was welcomed back into the club after being gone for a couple of years. He even received his original blue badge. Past President Brian Papstein talked about the importance of being involved in Rotary. Past President Kim Bauriedel noted that Hawley Butterfield did not receive an introduction from his sponsor and invited Hawley to introduce himself to those members who did not remember him from his past membership. President (aka Emperor) Gregg Gardiner received a fine of $10 from Dr. Bauriedel for not introducing Hawley. ANNOUNCEMENTS: We will meet at the Humboldt County Jail next Monday the 19th for our meeting. You need to RSVP if you are coming and if you plan to bring a guest so that we have enough lunches. Bring $11 for lunch. Proper change is appreciated. Weapons are not allowed. Prescription drugs (or any other drugs) are now allowed. Parking is in the large gravel parking lot area. Enter the jail through the 5th Street entrance. RECOGNITIONS: Nancy Dean was asked to stand as, even though she’s retired now, there was a letter to the editor in the Times-Standard about her good work in the community, at the weather service and thanked her especially for bringing champagne to a harbor district meeting. John Burger identified a photograph that President Gregg Gardiner held in hand as a photo of his grandson on a goose-hunting trip. President Gregg’s inside source had disclosed that 9 Aleutian Geese were shot on that trip. John received a $50 fine. Pat Folkins was fined $25 for forgetting to bring something. We don’t know what. J Hockaday was asked to stand in preparation for a fine he will be receiving in 2 weeks when Pat Folkins remembers what he forgot. Apparently there was one donated gift to Toys for Tots that was rejected as not being appropriate for children and J Hockaday apparently donated that gift. More to come on this interesting subject. Dave Tyson was back after missing 52 meetings. He’s been in Point Arena, serving as Interim City Manager. Ziggy came forward to help President Gregg determine the appropriate fine since part of the meetings missed were in Ziggy's year as President. After discussions of fines as large as $850 Dave was happy to settle for a fine of $250 as long as the fine David Hull paid for missing a number of meetings was equally large. Gregg acknowledged that David Hull’s fine was only $240 so he knocked $10 off of Dave’s fine. Fred Van Vleck was asked to stand for asking voters to pass Measure S in November, a 49.75 million dollar bond to repair school facilities. The first project will start on January 30th at Lincoln School. Project details can be found on the Eureka City School’s web site. Fred received a $100 fine. Past President Dennis Hunter recommended that the fine be split with Fred’s Campaign Chairperson, Gregg Gardiner. But both Gregg and Fred offered to pay $100 each. SPENGLER-HOWARD RAFFLE: John Burger won a bottle of Riverbend Cellars wine. Craig Hansen drew from the deck of cards for the joker and a pot of $370 but the pot’s still going up to $390 at the next meeting. GUEST SPEAKER INTRODUCTION: Liana Simpson introduced our speaker Emily Jacobs, Program Coordinator for the Arcata-Eureka Airport in McKinleyville. Liana joined the Fly Humboldt Committee to help solve the problem with air flight in Humboldt County. Why? We need competition to help lower rates, as the only national and regional recruiter in Humboldt County Liana has seen us lose great talent that she’s recruited for interviews because of the price/availability of air flights. She sees local business owners that are having a hard time getting to meetings and getting back home. Humboldt County needs to recruit physicians, we have a severe physician shortage but the air flight situation is a stumbling block.
Fly Humboldt needed to gather one million dollars as a minimum revenue guarantee (MRG) to entice an airline to consider coming here. They just crossed that goal line. It only took 8.5 months. Emily Jacobs is the Program Coordinator at the airport. She is a certified NOAA weather person, she manages the staff, budgets, is the chief negotiator with airlines in addition to a number of other duties. GUEST SPEAKER: Emily said that airlines have certain restrictions/requirements they have to pay attention to. One big one is that due to new restrictions from the FAA there is a huge shortage of pilots. Pilots are now required to have at least a 10 hour rest between flights plus flight training is costing about $100,000 while starting jobs at airlines are about $25,000 a year. So many pilots are choosing to work for private companies instead. On Wall Street shareholders are clamping down on growth because airlines have finally found a profitable model. Today airlines are not focused on market share as much as they are on profitability. There is a lot of concern about the drop in fuel prices because airlines have invested heavily in fuel-efficient planes and there’s a danger of smaller airlines being able to flood the market when they are vulnerable during the lowering of fuel prices. United is currently switching all flights to jets which expands their capacity to 50 to 70 seats per flight but Crescent City, Carlsbad and Chico are losing United because those airports can’t accommodate the jets on their current runways. Emily said airlines aren’t interested in using the MRG money, they prefer to have full flights which are more profitable. Liana noted that the way an MRG works is that a community commits to an airline up front in return for the airline bringing in new routes and flights. The guarantee is based on the revenue an airline must earn to make the route(s) viable and makes up the difference. So if a flight is under booked, but the airline needs to have 40 seats booked to be profitable, they can utilize the MRG money to make up the difference. Emily said when Delta came into Humboldt, we combined forces with Redding to sign an MRG and Delta was here for 9 years but they couldn’t continue to afford to be here. The benefit to Humboldt was lower airfare and more flights. The way to bring the costs of flying down is to fly more. By filling up seats locally we can demonstrate to interested airlines that there is a need. When we utilize other airports we are increasing their chances of bringing more airlines to that airport. 10% of flights are cancelled locally. It’s a lot lower cancellation rate than most people think. Emily showed us the best way to book the lowest cost flight. Directions: Go to Google.com/flights. A window will appear where you can enter the information about your flight and you will see the lowest price attached to all available flights. Emily had the audience call out various destinations and she showed us how easy it is to find the cheapest available flights. MEETING ADJOURNED: 1:30pm. Respectfully submitted, Alicia Cox
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