Rotary meeting 7/21/15, Betsy Baker-Bold reporting
Full Disclosure: Your trusty reporter was tardy today so I missed much of the early goings-on of the meeting. Thanks to your dependable Bulletin coordinator, Marc Baker for filling in for me, the delinquent daughter J
We were greeted at the Austin Bar & Grill by Katrina Koontz and Ron Thompson.
The meeting was called to order by her honor, President Deborah Wright followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. The thought of the day was provided by Kaye Phinney. Sorry to say there were no notes of visiting Rotarians or guests (so maybe Marc isn’t that dependable? Haha.)
As for announcements: Tammy Dunn announced the upcoming GolfFun event; calling all Golfers! We know you are out there.. Judi Edwards reported on the Fellowship event at the Flying Heritage Museum where we had 14 in attendance. There was a card to sign for Tony Edwards who was deployed by the National Guard to the Middle East.
Happy Dollars and Birthday Bucks kicked off with Parker Crompton’s $100 donation in honor of birthdays, staffing and her husband’s retirement. Marc Baker publicly shamed his tardy daughter who was supposed to be the Reporter for today’s meeting. Michael Hawks paid money for something but Marc either wasn’t paying attention or couldn’t hear (or both!) so there were no notes on his donation-sorry Michael.
Mark Valentine read a letter from the Amazon Medical Project thanking the Rotary Club of Everett for the donations as part of our speaker gifts for his presidential year. Marybeth Dingledy celebrated her summit of Mt. Shuksan as a fundraiser for Breast Cancer Research. Way to be an inspiring survivor, Marybeth! Past President Tom Koenig was celebrating working and wedding anniversaries and his near-death motorbike crash at Chelan (glad you are ok, Tom!). Joe Claeys is happy that his son has decided not to be a college drop-out anymore and is planning to return to school. Steve Ellis is in a weight loss challenge with Dale Newman for most percent body weight lost in the next month, as part of his winning the weight loss program at the last meeting. And finally Bruce Timm capped it off with ‘happy to be alive’ dollars from an unfortunate event.
In the drawing today, prizes included wine, golf balls, Bark in the Park tickets and chocolates. Winners included the lucky Marybeth Dingledy who took home two prize sets (a great congratulations gift from her recent summit I suppose!), and Clay Browse.
Katrina Koontz gave a nice introduction for our speaker today, Gene Duvernoy of Forterra who gave his presentation on “Live, Work & Play on our Lands today and what it means for tomorrow”. He reported that the Cascade region population will increase dramatically and will have a decline in snowpack by 70% by 2080.
He expressed the need to monitor growth in order to maintain and improve upon makes our region special. His work with Forterra advocates that decisions made today will affect how we use land in the future.
He reported on land policy, restoration and management, the importance of community involvement and policy innovation, traffic innovation and managment, hiking our outdoor lands accessibility and sustainability, and the overall livability of our region. He discussed wildlands, shorelines, forests, and the need to plan and build great city areas without excessive sprawl and save farmland. He reported that while millenials prefer urban living, we need to make sure that our urban areas are managed appropriately for the future or we will look and feel like the Los Angeles area of Southern California in our future, and we need to maintain our landscape and beauty of this region as we grow.
By 2060 the habitat of 3 kinds of pine trees will be reduced by 85%.
Forterra.org spoke with 2,000 people/community members in 2015 and the message was: improve people’s lives to improve community environment (houses, jobs, schools and parks, traffic/transit). More land conservation. A vast majority of those participating were hungry for shared sense of purpose and community. We can participate too by going online to their website to add comments of how to work together.
Gene reported on the importance of building up the livability of our rural corridors like Everett to Stevens Pass. It is important to develop rural towns on corridors to be vibrant and attractive for day trips. And as for cities; the goals are for all residents to have high quality of life, connectivity with traffic/transit and walkability, to develop a win/win for affordability, lifestyle and community visioning for local areas and parks. Develop vibrant, diverse and liveable cities.
Q&A: Marybeth Dingledy informed us that our Rotary Park clean up was helped/organized with Forterra; she thanked them publicly for their participation and help. Parker Crompton asked how Forterra was funded. (answer: generous donors, contracts with businesses and governments, land development and real estate). Tom Koenig brought up the issue of supporting working forests which includes timber industry/sustainability through working logging/selling timber/paying taxes.
In lieu of a speakers gift we made a donation to the Volunteers of America Dispute Resolution Center.
President Deborah thanked our speakers and Rotary members for their participation and contributions to our foundation which helps keep our club going!
There was no introduction of the next program, so I guess it will be a surprise! Dispute Resolution Center by Kath Rice.
MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS AND MAKEUP OPPORTUNITIES:
Rotary Board Meeting, July 23rd 7:30am 3rd Floor Chapel at Bethany-open to all to attend
District Golfun, August 7th 11am, Whidbey Island – Contact Tammy Dunn if interested
Fellowship Social at El Paraiso (in the bar), August 13th, 5-6:30pm-open to friends, family etc
Wheeler’s Meeting, August CANCELLED
Club-wide BBQ at Forest Park, September 13th 10am-5pm-bring friends, family..
President Deborah closed with the Aphorism : “Take a chance and you may lose, take not a chance and you have lost already.”
The meeting was adjourned early at 12:55pm
