May 20, 2026 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Our guests today were Mike Bellerose, Ari Roy, and, Sally from the church.
The 50/50 was won by Ken Williamson.
The card game draw fell to Dan, who was unsuccessful at finding the ace of spades.
Rotary Weekly Highlights: Matt DuBois brought us the profits from the Penny Sale concessions in December.
We do have a Citizen of the Year nominee.
Multiple members went to Circle Camp Cleanup this past weekend.
The Plymouth time capsule from 1976 was excavated on Saturday; unfortunately water had gotten into it and so the papers were all destroyed. The salvageable items will be on display at the historical society. A new capsule was buried, to be opened in 2076. A Rotary flag was among the items placed into the capsule.
The fireside chat for Mike and Ari will be held later today.
Mike report that the District Foundation committee met this past weekend. One of the applications was to help young people turning 18 and aging out of programs. They also interviewed two teacher applicants; one is going into special education, and the other is a music teacher who is going to a program in Chicago to learn how to repair instruments, thus saving her school money.
Tony presented a trivia game/Rotary minute/book report. This week’s theme is “the best boss you never had.”
Please get your payments in to Ken for Changing of the Guard. We have 7 folks paid up so far and we need 30 to have this happen. The event will be on June 17 at 6 pm at the Last Chair.
Centennial celebration: Sharon, Bill, and Tony are planning the festivities for our club’s 100th anniversary on August 3, 2027. One idea is to have a big picnic downtown for everyone with bins for donation to the Common Man For Ukraine, First Star Tonight, and other local charities. Mike went to Lincoln/Woodstock’s 75th anniversary last weekend to get ideas from them. They had the Woodstock Brewery produce a special ale for the occasion. 107 people showed up, including a lot of Rotary alumni.
Standing committee reports: Admin committee Our next 5th Wednesday evening social event will be on July 22 at Sunset Grill. (This is the 4th Wednesday but the 5th conflicted with Cruise Night). The committee also reviewed potential anniversary service projects. Mike noted that the Town of Plymouth is having a public meeting on Friday the 29th about what to do with Railroad Square area. You can also comment on it on the town website. Mike also brought a Bike Audit Kit and and Walk Audit Kit from the AARP for clubs thinking of working on walking or biking trails; we may find these useful as we plan our projects.
Service projects: Denise reports that we have several things going on. She will pass along a signup sheet for the Clean the Kanc project on June 6 at the base of Loon Mountain. Wear comfortable shoes and bring gardening gloves. They will provide trash bags, rubber gloves, and bug spray. Lunch will NOT be provided this year, as in recent years the cleanup has finished well before lunch. District conference will be weekend of June 13th. June 16th the Lancaster Rotary will be having their changeover and serving a French fry bar. Cruise Night will be July 29th (rain date the 30th). We will provide popcorn (Deb at the church will loan us their full size popcorn machine, so we will just need plugs and extension cords.) This will be an event for visibility; we will have a 50/50 and be wearing our new Rotary swag. Denise will also be meeting with Greg and the trails group to see about reworking the Rainbow Falls trails.
The Rotary sign from the Amphitheater was also discussed. The old sign needs to be repainted and repaired and it is in a building in Ashland. It may be simpler to just buy a new. Greg moved to buy new signs; the club approved and Denise will look into ordering these from Russell Hampton.
Public Image: Our new Rotary gear is in; please pay Ken Evans. We will get some new photos from Clean up the Kanc in June.
Membership: Denise will be sending an email after today’s fireside chats to see if the board will move to approve these new members. If so, they can be sworn in at the Changing of the Guard.
Foundation: We approved 10 students for scholarships; they will be awarded on June 1 during the high school’s annual awards ceremony. MaryBeth and Sharon will go that night and hand out the awards. Students will receive a letter and an invitation to our December meeting, and that is when they will get their check. Denise suggested that we have a subcommittee to work on transition grants, as the school is not really promoting it and this year we have not awarded any grants because we had no applicants. We need to approach the high school and see how they want us to promote it: Should we have a speaker go to the high school and give a presentation? We need to push our grants so that we can identify students who would benefit from the money. Sharon will ask Laurie Donahue at the school (who is in charge of scholarships) and see if she has ideas on how to promote the transition grants.
Ken Evans noted that our dues have been at $80 per 6 months at least since he joined in 2013. Rotary International and the district have increased their dues every year and he recently realized that we are charged $86 per person every 6 months. At the board meeting we decided to raise dues to $90, which will be the same amount for the companion club. We will continue to subsidize our dues with Super Bowl Squares and Happy Dollars.
Steve noted that the grant money we received from the Rotary Foundation came from the Foundation itself plus the DDF, which is the 3rd year return of our donations to the club. Our district actually put $90,000 into that fund, which is where the Common Man For Ukraine fund came from.
Happy dollars were shared by Denise, Raisa, Tony, Lora, and Mike Bellerose.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary
