Our Heidi’s back, and there’s gonna be trouble,
Hey La, Hey La, our Heidi’s back…
May 15 Meeting Notes
Recorded by Tom McClellan
Edited by David Hall
President pro annum Heidi Wachter rang the bell exactly one minute early, as has been her year-long custom, trying to milk her time as Club President for all it’s worth by shaving that extra little bit of time in her favor. At the very least, she has avoided Finemaster attention for starting late, as some past presidents have done (not mentioning any names….).
Our club welcomed back visiting Rotarian Ramona Hinton, of Rockford, Michigan, who is back visiting us again as she looks for a new Rotary home. And we also welcomed Debbie Armstrong, who is the exalted Education Director of the Lakewood Playhouse. Keep reading below for her shameless plug (of a worthy cause).
Show Me The Money
President Heidi promptly dove in and started with the important stuff. She summoned up Sydna Koontz, who has long served as a board member of Partners For Parks (PfP), to accept a check from our club for $1000. The donations to PfP are an annual tradition for our club, and the $1000 is a line-item in this year’s budget.
Our club’s donations in past years have helped PfP to put 2 restrooms into Fort Steilacoom Park, helped to renovate the trail around Waughop Lake, and will soon help with the big effort to renovate the “H Barn” as a community center. Sydna spoke about the upcoming “Barn Bingo Night” fundraiser on Friday, September 6, at 6PM, at the McGavick Center. Save the date, more details to follow.
Show Me The Chocolate
President’s excellence awards were generously granted to several members (but sadly, and perhaps unfairly, NOT including Paul Webb). The honorees included:
John Munn, for pinch hitting last week as president pro tem
Dave Hall, for great work on logo redesign and rebranding (more on that below).
Marie Barth (okay, this one was Heidi just baldly sucking up to this week’s Finexecutrix Pro Tem). And it happened too fast for your scribe to both get a picture and write it down.
Announcements
Board meeting this Friday, everyone welcome, 0730 at Carr’s.
Fellowship Hour next Thursday, May 23, at Tacoma Country and Golf Club. Show up around 1630-1700.
Upcoming Speakers:
May 22 Krista Linden, Step By Step Organization, helping new families
May 29 COL Thomas Bundt, Madigan Army Medical Center
June 5 John Munn and Brandon Solomonson, Classification Talks
CPRI, The Clover Park Rotary Invitational
Ellie Carr reports great job on getting in prizes. But we have only 56 slots sold, so 44 more to go. Signups can be done online now at https://cloverparkrotary.org/event/cpri/.
Golf Tournament
Committee meeting to be held after this week’s regular meeting.
Fun And Fines
Marie Barth served as the guest Finexecutrix, wearing cowgirl boots, which I mention “for no particular reason”, (thank you Forrest Gump)
It was a chaotic F&F segment, with a mixture of confessions (at a presumed reduced rate) and “Getting To Know All About You” trivia for a maximum of $5 each.
Confessions included:
Sheri Hodson, going to California for a double Mothers’ Day. $20
Becky Newton, spending 4 days at Hood Canal for Mother’s Day. $20
Teresa Nye’s son made 1st Team All-Conference in Lacrosse as a sophomore. ($ amount unrecorded)
John Munn’s Education Director Debbie Armstrong highlighted the Lakewood Playhouse’s upcoming Summer Camp flyer. 1/3 of students need scholarships. Our club is already committing to support Lakewood Playhouse, but if anyone would like to make an individual donation to the Lakewood Playhouse for their Summer Camp program, visit www.lakewoodinstituteoftheatre.org.
Club Assembly
In lieu of committee group meetings, we heard presentations from selected directors concerning current projects and issues.
Dave Hall (Public Image Director) continued the discussion of logo design and branding efforts. He has coordinated with the graphic design program at Clover Park Technical College, where students created potential designs based on guidelines that Dave provided. Dave had shown one preliminary design at a prior meeting, and was grateful for the club members who offered feedback. Those suggestions were incorporated into the latest student submissions. The plan is to submit a final design to the board at the May 17 meeting, and then bring it to the club members for an approval vote on May 22.
Alan Billingsley (Service Projects Director) discussed how the proposed splash park project in Fort Steilacoom Park is not ready to move forward now for a variety of reasons. The City of Lakewood does not have the funding to contribute to building and operating it yet. Constructing the Pavillion ended up taking up a lot of the City’s parks budget (which the Council was not expecting).
A new idea could be to work with the State Wildlife Refuge near Hudtloff Middle School. It is a State owned facility which does not have functions to employ all of the land space. The State still operates a fish hatchery there. So it is effectively an extra park for the City of Lakewood, but administered by the State. The idea would be for our club to “adopt” it in some way, perhaps working on fencing, signage, benches, or other visitor usage improvements. Still at the rough idea stage. Several members voiced support of that. Alan will get in contact with the site director to see what could be done.
Paul Webb (Membership Director) showed statistics on members’ attendance this year, and emphasized that we serve each other just by showing up at meetings. If you would like to see your own attendance statistics, go to our web site, www.cloverparkrotary.org, and then click on the Member Area link in the top right corner. Then under the “My ClubRunner” category, find the link for “My Attendance”. And if you have any Rotary events you participated in (+/-30 days from an absence), contact secretary Tom McClellan to get make up credit.
Raffle:
With $445 in the pot, and 3 aces left in the deck, Alan Billingsley had the winning raffle ticket. And he drew the Ace of Spades!!!
And Finally…
This is an actual tweet posted on Twitter by Amtrak California. It seems like a rather unusual message to be offered up by a railroad company.
