President Gina Patterson opened the meeting at our lunch meeting site: Kiwanis Shelter at Living Memorial Park, Gina welcomed all to the June 13, 2024 meeting of the Brattleboro Rotary www.brattlebororotaryclub.org

Invocation:

Greg Worden's invocation invited us to have gratitude for each other and the opportunity to do good with rotary.

Gina lead the club with the Pledge of Allegiance

27 Members, 0 Student Rotarians and 1 guests attended the meeting.

Guests:

Dave Neumeister, past member of the BRC

JOKE OF THE WEEK - For our joke or song of the week:

Stay tuned

ED NOTE: 2023-24 weekly assignments are posted on the club website.

Rotarians for Rotarians:

Milt Eaton is doing ok, recently went back to his home in Maine.

New Members:

ROTARY MINUTE

Frank Rutger gave a summary of the financials for both Rotary International, and Rotary Foundation, helping to distinguish these two organizations that are often confused or conflated. Rotary International has a $125 million annual budget, the revenues of which mostly come from the following, $90 million from dues, $5 million from the rotary magazine, $8 million from the international convention. Rotary International has equity of $150 million, 342 employees, and John Hewko is the president of both organizations. The Rotary Foundation has $400 million in annual revenue. The Annual Fund World Fund and the Polio Plus initiative gather the most contributions. The Foundation has 300 employees, and $1.2 billion is the equity. Frank is impressed with the strong financial footing of these organizations, and the ability to do great things with those resources.

Note for future presenters; The Rotary Minute could also have the speaker talk about their personal involvement in Rotary or personal background.

Years of Service in our Club for April:

On Behalf of our Club and all Rotarians, thank you for your Service Above Self

Student Rotarian updates:

Birthday greetings -

BIRTHDAYS FROM RUBIN -

Jennifer Ambler had her birthday and used her speech opportunity to share how happy she is that her 3 month old grandson is doing well, after a challenging medical beginning.

Meeting location -6/20 Holiday Inn Express - off Putney Rd

Announcements

See below

ED NOTE: Weekly assignments for the invocation or motivational thought can be found on the club website.>

UPCOMING PROGRAMS

Jim Haine announced

6/20 Meeting at the Holiday Inn! The Lieutenant Governor will visit.
6/27 Change Over Dinner at Saxton's River Distillery $20 per person, partners invited and encouraged, RSVP to rob_szpila@yahoo.com
7/4 no meeting for the holiday
7/11th

REMINDERS

Please bring your bottles and cans to the Putney Road redemption center to benefit Pure Water for the World. Please remember to inform the staff that the bottles and cans should be credited to the club.
“Like” the club’s Facebook page

FINES & Happy Dollars

AND Announcements

•   Betsy Gentile announced the big party happening this Saturday and Sunday at the Retreat Farm.
•   Greg Worden announced the Welcome Center Fundraiser on Saturday, June 29 where we typically raise 1k+ depending on what we offer. Food is what is needed. Hot dogs and coffee will be provided. Sweets, individually wrapped if possible. Contact Greg to let him know what you could bring.
•   Dave Twombly announced that he moved his business office to Chesterfield, and bragged for Bill Vermouth helping him move.
•   Stan Nowakowski announced the deadline for contributing to the Rotary Foundation and the $50 match. Contact Carla Lineback carla.lineback@yahoo.com for questions. You may login to make your donattion here: https://my.rotary.org/en/login
•   Betsy Gentile announced our first cotton candy sale at the food truck round up. We need another person to help sell Cotton Candy to cute kids from 5:00-8:00 - your admission to the roundup will be free as a volunteer. Betsy has all the material and has people for making and bagging it the night before. Thank you to everyone who signed up for this fun fundraiser.
•   John Mabie bragged for Gina attending the Hinsdale graduation and handing out two awards, one to Julia Hammond, our student Rotarian who was also the Valedictorian and Class President! John attended Leland and Gray' graduation and handed out additional awards. More awards will be given out and the awardees will be announced at that time.
•   Rob Szpila presented the slate of officers for the Rotary Board next year as follows: Past President: Gina Pattison, President: Rob Szpila, President Elect: Chris Hart, Vice President: Mark Anderson, Treasurer: Rhonda Calhoun, Secretary: Regina Stefanelli, Community Service: Stan Nowakowski, International: George Anthes, Vocational: Betsy Gentile
•   Greg Worden bragged for his rotarian tennis partner.
•   Bill Vermouth bragged for Greg Worden, Dave Neumeister, and all the golf tournament volunteers who made the event so successful.
•   Gina Pattison bragged for the golf tournament volunteers and the very successful event.
•   George Anthes bragged for his child's participation in the circus act at the Retreat Farm, for his appreciation for his LGBTQ+ family and friends during this Pride month, and for the 95th birthday of Anne Frank.
•   Dave Twombly bragged that his 4 year old grand-daughter graduated from being a caterpillar to a butterfly!
•   Bill Vermouth announced that we now have a named fund for Phil Steckler that was started at the Golf Tournament.
•   John Mabie shared our plan to support the Jerusalem Peacebuilders, founded by local resident Rev. Nick Porter in 2011, who visited our club about a year ago. The organization brings together Israeli, Palestinian, and American youth for cross cultural understanding. They also offer a teacher training program, which will be held in Derry Ireland this year because of unrest in middle East, and with the hopes of learning from Ireland's hard won peace. Their goal is to raise $150,000 and they have support from Rotary Clubs in San Francisco, Paris and elsewhere. Our club is committing $500 and is inviting members to consider a gift as well. Contributions to Jerusalem Peacebuilders, a 501©3 tax exempt entity, can be made by check to “Jerusalem Peacebuilders” with a note or memo to “EXCEL program.”   Please give your checks to George Anthes or John Mabie at our 6/20 meeting and we will send the set of checks together.
•   Stan Nowakowski invited us to visit the Hospice Garden at the Park to see the work we did recently to help prepare for Hospice's memorial service.
•   Gina Pattison led the club in a remembering some of the many contributions we've made to recreation opportunities for our neighbors here, and some of these projects were recalled: the deck of the Kiwanis Shelter, Water Park, Disc golf trails, Snow guns, Chapel bench repairs, Train play structure, painting of the ski lift towers, the ice rink scoreboard, other contributions to the ice rink, the slides for pool, and the painting of the mural on back of pool house, just to name a handful.

PROGRAM

Guest Speaker:

Gina lead the club -

Rotary Meeting Location Planning
•   Gina Pattision discussed other lunch venue's we're considering.
•   Cheri Ann expressed a desire for more communication regarding our decisions for changing venues. At that time, Rob Szpila reminded club members that Gina Pattision was told by the Heart Rose Club that we couldn't continue on Thursday due to their changing business model, but were invited to continue on Mondays at the Heart Rose Club.
•   Legion return is possible.
•   Next week's Rotary meeting will be at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites, thanks to Frank LaGrande's generous offer to allow us to use their conference room for just $50 per meeting. Bill Daley and the Vermont Country Deli will cater and deliver the lunch. The cost of lunches is $16.49 per person, not including the room fee. So the board proposed increasing our lunch fee to $17.
•   We discussed a motion from Cheri Ann Brodhurst to increase the fee to $20 which was later amended to include the need for RSVPs. Mark Anderson seconded Cheri Ann's motion. The motion didn't pass with 11 for and 13 against and several people abstaining. We discussed another motion to increase to $17 for the time being, with a possible increase in the future depending on catering costs, and to also require RSVPS proposed by Ron Stahley and seconded by several people. That motion passed with only one vote against and several people abstaining.

Scribe: Rob Szpila, with apologies for any mistakes or omissions.

REMINDERS

FINES & Happy Dollars

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