Bulletin for April 6, 2009
VIPs in Action
By Jim Hinton
Preliminaries
 The Mystery Substitute President President David McDonald left us mystified last week when he announced that he would not be with us today and that a surprise stand-in would substitute for him. Well, it turned out to be none other than our beloved Past-President Chris Parr. In her usual ebullience, and looking lovely in a red and white Hawaiian dress, she welcomed the "cool club" of District 5130 and its guests and visiting Rotarians to a fabulous meeting. |
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| Mike Moore led the Pledge of Allegiance, and Ralph Lassa introduced two visiting Rotarians from the Santa Rosa downtown club. Ralph really takes this Rotary Right Of Passage seriously, earlier before the Meeting he was right there at the front door greeting everyone who came through………seen here greeting The Flower Boys. |
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| Ruth Lincoln introduced her guest, Michelle Arellana, the confidential secretary of the Director of the Department of Health Services of Sonoma County. Michelle has been selected to be a GSE representative of District 5130, and she will soon be off to Brazil for five weeks with the GSE team. We'll see her again when she returns. Past President Chris presented Michelle with some SRWR Club banners to distribute during her travels as a member of the District 5130 GSE team to Brazil. |
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Announcements & Such
President Pro Tem Chris reported that she and Barbara Larson attended the District Assembly in Fortuna over the weekend, where (among other things) they found a whole bunch of blue glass four-point stars. She presented one to every member who remembered to wear a Hawaiian shirt today, saying something to the effect that the four points represented Rotary's four avenues of service!
| She also announced that Maureen Merrill, a past president of the Windsor Club and a tireless Rotarian, has been selected as District Governor Nominee Elect. Hooray, and congratulations Maureen! |
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| One of our visiting Rotarians announced that the Santa Rosa downtown club will be having a Golf Tournament & Dinner fundraising event on May 15th. He cordially invited our golfing members to join them. The cost is $100.00 per person, and the now-famous chef Guy Fieri will be cooking. |
Recognition
Jim Sullivan
had a birthday yesterday, which he celebrated by baby sitting in the morning and presiding at a family dinner in his honor in the evening. Happy birthday, Jim, and that'll be $20.00. But wait! Jim generously donated $50.00, perhaps suggesting that this amount matched his age (which it doesn't).
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Barbara Larson
was recognized for attending the District Assembly. She reported that she and Chris were able to find a sufficient amount of their beverages of choice, and that Chris was brilliant in presenting two membership seminars. $20.00 was mentioned, but was it paid by Barbara or by Chris?Mike Moore
was welcomed back from Indio, where he and Jan have a second home. He explained what they have been doing there--playing golf, travelling around, looking at Hoover Dam, and playing golf again. $20.00.
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Our new members, Kris Lapore and Casey Williams, were also recognized. Kris and his wife recently spent some time in Hawaii, and over the weekend they attended the Bodega Bay Fleet Festival. Casey has just been "hanging out" and had no special occurences to report, $20.00 each.
Bo Kirschen
was recognized, but I just listened and laughed and didn't write anything down and I don't have a clue what he was talking about, except something about cannibals and lawyers. (How could anyone ever make that association?).And in good conscience, President Pro Tem Chris Parr donated $40.00 to the Rotary Foundation in recognition of her upcoming birthday.
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Raffle:
Visitor Michelle Arellano held the ticket called for the chance of winning $650.00, which would have been a nice going-away-to-Brazil gift, but she failed to pick the black marble. Ken Prouty had the right number to win the bottle of Albertina cabernet sauvignon.
Program: VIPs in Action
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Pam Davis
introduced our speaker today, Joe McClelland, a retired real estate broker and developer well-known to many in attendance, who spoke about Volunteers In Police Services. Joe’s able-bodied assistant and fellow Volunteer in Police Services Bill Turner manned the laptop for their PowerPoint slide presentation. Bill is a retired Army Command Sergeant Major, and a former Dean at Santa Rosa Junior CollegeVolunteers In Police Services is a nation-wide organization of community-minded men and women who volunteer their assistance to local police departments. This organization has some 98,000 volunteers in all 50 states. Joe was a founding member of the Santa Rosa group in 1988, which now has 45 members. They perform many vital services, such as patrolling city streets, conducting safety fairs and crime prevention programs in schools and elsewhere, towing abandoned vehicles, setting up radar speed trailers, conducting police department tours, providing traffic control at accident scenes, and performing administrative duties and many other tasks as requested by the SRPD.
In 2008, the Santa Rosa VIP's performed 3500 hours in patrolling services, 1500 hours in administrative duties, and thousands of hours in outreach activities. They wear police uniforms, but do not become involved in any confrontations. Rather, they are the "eyes and ears" for officers on the streets and on neighborhood watches. They are radio- equipped for instant reporting of incidents needing law enforcement attention to police dispatchers. They do not carry weapons and are not empowered to issue traffic citations, except to vehicles illegally parked in marked disabled spaces. Training is provided by the SRPD and starts with the Citizens Police Academy. One of the really fun parts of their training, said Joe, is driving patrol vehicles in a designated course at high speeds, so to learn what a vehicle's control limits are.
Great program!
| Your Bulletin Reporter: Jim Hinton  |
Your
Bulletin Editor: Jim Valinoti  |