June 25, 2025 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Guests today were transition grant recipients and their families.
Tony opened with results of last week’s survey over the future of NH trivia. The consensus was to continue to present Tony’s famous NH and Rotary trivia alternating with other things like a member minute.
The 50/50 was won by Beth.
Ken Williamson drew his own ticket for the card game but was unsuccessful at selecting the ace of spades.
Mike presented the seven habits of ineffective Rotarians, courtesy of John Capps.
Corbin and Devin receive their training grants.
Beth introduced transition grant recipient Devin, attending with her grandmother. She will be attending NHTI to train in dental hygiene. Then we heard a few words from training grant recipient Corbin Ross, here with his parents Anita and Robert Ross. Corbin has earned 9 college credits at PRHS and will study the culinary arts at Lakes Region Community College. Ultimately he wants to open a bakery in Thornton. The students were each presented with their checks.
Today’s meeting was a club forum. The board met last Friday. We have $3100 in the bank and are still getting dues payments. The Changing of the Guard will be held tonight at the Covered Bridge starting at 5:30. We will start inside lower level down by the river.
Happy dollars are helping us to bring more money in to the club. Keep it up!
Lora and Mike received information on an upgrade to ClubRunner; we have the option of going with this upgrade. Upon reviewing the upgrade, Lora felt that it is more complicated and would do a lot of things that perhaps are not needed for a relatively small club such as ours. Denise will speak to Margaret Labarge to get her opinion on whether or not to upgrade.
Net revenue of club, exclusive of the Common Man for Ukraine, is $1200; this time last year we were at negative $11,000. Steve just sent $140,000 to Ukraine and they are still raising money. He has opened a new high yield checking account that pays 3% interest on balances above $250,000.
Committee work: It had been suggested that we should work on growing membership by forming a satellite club. A satellite club would be part of our club but could include young professionals who couldn’t attend meetings easily; such members would pay dues and work on service projects but would not have to feel guilty about not attending our morning meetings. At his time the board felt that a satellite club might draw people away from our own club. Tony and Alicia have talked about having one evening meeting a month to attract folks who can’t attend in the morning, so as to be more flexible, and this would be another way to grow our membership..
Jake Tuck spoke to the board and he repeated his talk to the club this morning. He has an idea to start helping people who can’t afford snow removal in the winter. He hopes that Rotary could help organize and find people who need the help and help provide funding to cover the cost. (Services would be provided at cost or even a little below). He also suggested Saturday roof shoveling with volunteers. After tonight’s changeover, he would like to see a committee formed to discuss this idea. Right now his business works in Campton, Thornton, Woodstock, and Lincoln, with a one route on Fairgrounds Road in Plymouth. We could perhaps get Lincoln- Woodstock on board with this project as well. Next week Denise will pass around a signup sheet for those who are not on a committee or working on a project to serve on the service project committee.
Styrofoam project: Cari joined the pickup group. Plymouth does not seem to be supporting the project; we only get half a bag of styrofoam per week in Plymouth vs 3 in Thornton and Holderness. Bill suggested that perhaps people are having trouble finding the bin in Plymouth. Denise also suggested that perhaps improving the signage at the Plymouth Recycling Center would improve usage. Ken noted that driving to Gilford through Weirs Beach during Bike Week was not pleasant and perhaps we cold find a way to avoid this next year.
Shelby McDonald, who did a Rotary exchange, is interested starting an Interact club at the high school. Marybeth will be the club mentor and there is a teacher on board as well.
Sharon is starting to work on Penny Sale lists so we can start soliciting. Tony may be asking for other volunteers to help with the committee.
Denise spoke about the car show. It will be getting support from the Common Man; they will do the precooked burgers and hot dogs. We will have to have an efficient way to get food to the river. The event will be July 30 (rain date 31) and we will need 3 to 4 volunteers at the point of sale to sell these items. It will be simple since it’s precooked. We’ll bring our Rotary banner to hang in front of the tables.
Lora gave an update on the anniversary grant/trail project. We have encountered a problem, in that one of the property owners along the path has a conservation easement on his land and is unwilling to consider allowing a trail that would permit snowmobiles. There is more funding available for trails that allow both motorized and non-motorized use, and we had hoped to gain help from snowmobile clubs to get the trail up and running. We will need to see if the gentleman is open to a crushed stone trail for non-motorized use (he does currently permit foot traffic and skiing). If we have to avoid his section altogether, building the trail becomes much more difficult; it would require a detour all the way up to Highland Street or crossing the river to avoid his property. More research is needed.
Happy dollars were shared by Beth, Lora, Steve, Bill, Mike, Denise, and Russ.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary
