Meeting of March 1, 2016

We were 18 members strong. In attendance were Barb Busing who had been away in Florida for a few months and Bob Neibert who had been locked in his office at work for the same period of time. We were delighted to welcome them both back. Harold Gruneberg was the Greeter and Bob Neibert – the very same – took attendance. The meeting recorder was Jessica Brennan. Ernie Romain was at his post as Sergeant-at-Arms

 

Happy Dollars: Ernie started off the Happy Dollars, regaling us with how tornedoes had chased him across Florida during his recent vacation. Steve Roblin and his wife had a week in the Turks and Caicos before their third child is due. The week started off like a Gong show but somehow the beaches, the view, time together and the people turned the week into a glorious holiday. Bill Armstrong was back from holiday where he won nearly $300 at the casino. Everyone there urged him to bet again but he held steady and just took his winnings. Some of us suspected that money went towards the bar bill. Carl was happy that it was his wife’s birthday and that it would be his later this week. He donated $10 to Rotary for each year he has been alive. He started this tradition when he became a Rotarian years ago but joked that now it was getting rather costly. Dave had been on vacation and reported that he was going to be a grandfather again this year. Bob Neibert was happy to be at the meeting and described his recent promotion at Hillfield-Strathallan. Barb put in her happy dollars for a wonderful time in Florida. While there she had attended a Rotary meeting at Bob Morrow’s place (Wayne was also there) and wondered if that qualified as a make-up.

 

Program: Club President Shirley Molloy guided us through a review of the Club’s strategic goals for the years 2012 to 2017. The document she referred to “Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives” has a link (under Site Pages) on the home page of our website. She pointed out that this exercise would be the first step in designing the next strategic plan. The 2012-2017 Strategic Plan is divided into three Board categories: The Club; The Local Community; and, The Global Community. We had time to only to review the first three goals under The Club category. The meeting attendees offered comments about whether a goal had been achieved or whether it was still achievable. Goal One is about membership. While we are not yet at 60 members, we certainly have gone a long way to recruiting eight new members under 45. For Goal Two, we felt that with annual fundraising including Foundation that we were close to the $1200 per member for our operating budget. A scratch lottery has not been implemented and didn’t seem to be on the radar any more. One objective had been to turn the fireworks into an all-day event. This had not been realized and was probably no longer workable. Parking challenges and noise issues were noted. We are continuing to support the Rotary Stars and Lobsterfest. We do want to avoid having the Rotary Stars on the same day as the Winter Carnival. We felt that a discussion about Rotary Stars’ placement in the year’s event schedule was needed. We suggested that for Goal Three (membership engagement) we are a very active club. We are also doing well in some areas for succession planning. We noted that we haven’t yet prepared role descriptions for each committee and/or event. Having reviewed the first three goals, we would use an upcoming Club Assembly to continue the review of 2012-2017 Strategic Plan and to craft the next one.