November 22, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

Guests: guest George Baranowsksy and Phil LaMoreaux

 

50/50 was won by Russ.

 

Card game: Steve won the chance to draw but missed the ace so the game continues.

 

Tony was absent so we had no trivia.

 

Beth began with a recap of Friday’s board meeting. Ken reported finances: we have $1600 in bank, and owe around $150 to the eventual card game winner.  There are no bills due and the account has been reconciled. Steve reported on the foundation. We have approved his request to create an interest-bearing account to hold the funds for Common Man for Ukraine that is earning 4.5% interest on the balance of about $250,000.  

 

Grant requests: Pemi Youth Center requested $1000 for their Christmas drive, which was approved. We will give them the check next week and hope to get a photo opportunity out of it. The Youth Center’s Holiday Party will be on Dec 8 at 4 pm. The Angel Tree Project also requested $1000, and the board approved this as well. 

 

Projects: Beth and Steve will work together on removing the sign at the amphitheater and shipping it back to the manufacturer to be repaired. The board also voted to replace some of the lights that we use to decorate the Common. This year’s decoration will be this Saturday; meet at Peggy’s at 8:30, or 9 am at the Common. We have enough ladders. Bring wire cutters and warm clothes. Denise hopes to get Mt Prospect electrical students to help as well.

 

Penny Sale: Ticket sales were a little off this year and Grand Prize tickets were also slightly down. Net is close to last year’s.

 

Danielle has resigned from Rotary. She had visited her father and caught Covid but has recovered. She is now working for Peggy on a short term basis while she decides on her next step. We also got an email from Susan who is stepping down from Rotary to take care of her father. 

 

Holiday parade: we will skip the float this year, as Alicia will be gone and there were concerns about finding a truck and a driver. We will march this year as we have in the past and hope to do the float next year. 

 

We also ent to the Chamber event at Waterville Estates at the ski lodge . Sixty-five people attended and many were interested in bringing styrofoam to be recycled. Mike, Denise and Maddy met last week to coordinate another joint Chamber of Commerce-Rotary after-hours event at the Six Burner Bistro on Wed Feb 7. There will be an event invitation sent electronically; it is important for us to respond as they want to make name tags in advance for those attending. Bring your business cards, and expect door prizes. 

 

The speech contest will be held this winter. The board is looking at giving $25 per person who signs up and increasing the dollar amount of the first and second prizes in order to stimulate interest, Intereact has a couple of teachers that they will try to get to put it into the curriculum as well and this should get us more participants.

 

Steve passed out schedules for the Hometown Holiday Celebration. Please post liberally around town. We will have an ad in Record Enterprise and Pennysaver for the next two weeks. We have not distributed promotional materials to the school. We are promoting it on our own  Facebook  page as well as on the Hometown Holiday Celebration page and on a page inside the Plymouth Rotary Foundation site. There is also a registration form for the parade. A list of jobs for the day was passed around; please sign up or email Steve if you were not able to sign up this morning.

 

Alicia has spent weeks preparing the budget, which was approved by the board at last week’s meeting. Our fiscal year started on July 1. We set our target goals and we hope to do a little better on the annual fund this year. Our goal is to raise $39,000 this year (we raised $37,000  last year). This does not include any money from the district for specific projects. We increased our goal for community support. We give $500 to international support for polio. The Admin committee would like to do a large community project, spending about $10,000 and working with the community to do some hands-on work in the next calendar year. In 2 years we will be 100 years old and we would like to do something even bigger for that year. Denise spoke to Pemi Baker Centennial Lions; they give gift cards to the Bridge House every year but they have low visibility in the community. She suggested that we partner with them to improve visibility for both organizations.

 

Ukraine update: Steve and Suzanne presented information about the Common Man for Ukraine to the Sherbrooke club yesterday and were given a club banner. They will give us $1500 (Canadian) for the project and they want to do a fundraiser. Steve and the other founders have done about 20 of these presentations, either in person or via Zoom. Their latest trip to Ukraine started in Poland and they covered 2500 miles on the circuit this time, going further into the center of the country than they had done before.  They visited two of the children who had attended the camp for traumatized children and even went to their school; the children were in the bomb cellar when they arrived and this is typical of the stresses that they face.

 

Alex and Denise shared happy dollars.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Lora Miller, secretary