Leavenworth Rotary Club

Leavenworth Rotary Club

Board Meeting Minutes

August 10, 2010

1.The meeting of the Leavenworth Rotary Board was called to order at the RiverfrontCommunity Centerat 12:01 pm. by its president, John Donovan.

Members Present:Members Absent:Others:

John Donovan DeEtte LombardMoe Cougher, Asst District Governor

Tom Gray

Shay Baker

Teri Yunghans

Karel Sigtenhorst

Mark Gerges

Larry Martin

Deb Snider

Mike Lehnherr

Shari Hansen

2.Committees.

a.Membership.

(1)Deb Snider reported that she has received applications for two new members, Tamara Sevcik, sponsored by DeEtte Lombard, and Dean Ayres, sponsored by Bill Kidder. Tamara is a Management Analyst with USAFMSA at Ft.Leavenworth and Dean is the manager of the city airfield. Both prospective members will be announced at the next two meetings and a board vote will be done via email.

(2)Deb also shared her membership numbers which jive with the secretary’s numbers.

The two new transfers, Andy Nisbet and Rick Hamelund, have both been cleared from their clubs and are reflected under our club on the District 5710 and RI websites. Karel Sigtenhorst inquired as to whether they will have formal induction ceremonies and all were in agreement that this should be done at the next meeting that they are in attendance.

1. Administration/Programs.

(1)Tom Gray reported that there is a program issue for August 25th . There have been openings left in the program schedule to accommodate programs that members want to bring to the club outside of their turn, but lately there have not been these types of requests. Since the District Governor is coming on September 1st, Leif Sanford can be moved up to the August 25th slot and the Board will move to the September 1st slot, thereby solving the program issue. Tom Gray will notify Leif.

(2)Billy Blackwell has agreed to do the Bulletin each week and is doing an excellent job on this. Tom will make sure that Linda Ireland is included on the email distribution list per John’s request.

(3)Tom reported that the Directory is ready to be picked up from the printer tomorrow but he will need someone to do that for him as he will be TDY. John will pick up the booklets for Tom and bring to the meeting on Wednesday.

c.Foundation. DeEtte Lombard was absent and no report was submitted. President John Donovan shared that he has also not received any new report from Bill Kromer.

d.New Projects.

(1) Mark Gerges distributed an updated list of the project ideas that have been submitted for this year. Mark has added the additional information to the projects list as requested at the last board meeting. President John Donovan inquired about an international project which the Water Project in Uganda would qualify for that. John questioned whether we can get a commitment from Mike Keohane and/or John Kaufman to lead the project if this project is selected. In order for this project to be successful, we are also going to need someone on the other end to facilitate the project. President John Donovan feels that before sending this updated project list out to the general membership that the list should be distributed to the other clubs around the district to see if there are any opportunities for teaming up together on some of the projects with other clubs. It was also suggested that we may want to decide if there are any obvious ones on the list that we would want to eliminate before proceeding. All were in agreement to mark the DVD project off the list because it is not something that has been requested by the schools and it would take their support to be successful. It was also suggested that the Walking Trail project should be postponed because the city is not ready to commit anything to this project at this time. Larry Martin suggested that the club focus on a few projects and doing those well as opposed to taking on too many projects and spreading ourselves too thin. Karel Sigtenhorst also suggested coming up with some criteria to use to rate the projects for voting. For example, he feels there are a lot of projects for the downtown area that involve Rotary emblems on items and we could end up with “Rotary overkill” in one area of town. After much discussion, it was decided that Mark would further update the list and prepare it to share with the district clubs after final board review. Once this is done, it will be shared with the general membership.

e.Service.

(1)Larry Martin reported that DeEtte is working on a Service Directory booklet. This consists of information papers of all the service projects and is meant to be a resource guide for successors who take over the various service projects. Larry will be the first to benefit from this information booklet.

(2) Mark Gerges reported that the LAYLC (Leavenworth Area Youth Leadership Conference) dates will need to change due to the dates being pushed back by the District and requested board approval on that. Since a date change is not a fiduciary change, the board members were all in agreement that this can be done without bringing it to the board for approval. Mark will move the LAYLC project from the September timeframe to October, the week after the Columbus Day Holiday. Mark plans to get letters out this week to the schools.

f.Grants. Shay Baker has no new grant requests.

g.Fund Raising.

(1)Shay Baker gave an update on the Main Street and Ft. Leavenworth MWR“Home Town Welcome” event scheduled for August 14, 2010, at Haymarket Square from 5-11 pm. Rotary will be selling nonalcoholic beverage for the event which includes soda and water. Kinetico/JF Denney have donated bottled water for us to sell and Shay will purchase sodas and probably some ice tea or lemonade drinks to sell, also. RD from High Noon will let us chill all the items in his cooler until the start of the event so we will just need to move them to coolers and keep them under ice. Main Street has requested that we split our profits with them at a rate of 50%. Since there are 3 sponsors of this event, two of which are not asking for any profit sharing, it was the feeling of the board that we need to see what we end up with in terms of profit, then determine any potential percentage to share with Main Street. All were in agreement that the max % that should be shared in any case should not exceed 25%. Shay does still need a couple volunteers to man the booth at the event and she will announce that at tomorrow’s meeting and hopefully fill those slots.

(2) Shay has notified the First City Festival Committee that we will not be participating in the event this year as there is no activity scheduled in the morning that would make the Pancake Breakfast a worthwhile fundraiser for Rotary.

h. Public Relations.

(1) Shay reported that there were approximately 300 in attendance at the summer concert that was sponsored by Rotary on July 26th and the band was very good. Ryan Markle had positioned the Rotary Wheel at LandingPark in a very visible location and it looked great per Shay. The Rotary Banner was also on display. Discussion ensued as to what has been done in terms of recognizing Ryan Markle and Ted Sexton for their contributions to the wheel project and it was pointed out that a plaque with their names on it is planned for display on the trailer.

(2)Shay reminded the board of the upcoming poolside party planned for hosting the Young Professionals of Leavenworth County (YPLC) on August 19th, 5:30 – 7:30pm. Tom Gray has graciously offered up his home for this event. All Rotarians attending are asked to bring a dessert or appetizer to share and they will be reminded at the meeting tomorrow.

(3)Shay has received an information brochure on “Autumn in the Grove” for Lansing which is coming up on Saturday, October 29th from 10 am-5 pm. Based on previous years’ experiences with this event, it was decided that Rotary would not participate in this event this year.

i.Training.

(1) Tom Gray gave a report on the Leadership Seminar held in Topeka last Saturday. We had 5 members from the Leavenworth club attend which were President John Donovan, DeEtte Lombard, Tom Gray, Larry Martin, and Shari Hansen. Both Tom Gray and DeEtte Lombard presented leadership programs at the Seminar. Based on our club size, we did not have a great showing and it was suggested that perhaps we plan to do a presentation at our own club of some of the items covered at the Topeka Seminar. Tom will explore this as an option.

(2) Larry Martin inquired about doing an assessment of learning for the new members and a deliberate process for incorporating new members into the club. President John Donovan has spoken to Bill Kromer, Information Committee Chair, about this and Larry should get with Bill to discuss this further and come up with ideas as to how this will work. It was also suggested that perhaps there needs to be more board presence at the Information Committee meetings, i.e., perhaps board members could rotate and attend these meetings so new members are familiar with the board members.

4.Last meeting’s minutes. Minutes were approved as written. Motion to accept made by Mark Gerges, seconded by Deb Snider. The motion was passed unanimously.

5.Secretary’s Report. Membership numbers were transposed due to a copy/paste error from the District report whichShari will fix and resend out. Also, Joel Grodberg will be placed on LOA due to his medical illness and the attendance figures will be adjusted to reflect this. Some members thought that Sylvia Rivera may need to be placed on LOA as she is out of town on assignment so Shari will contact her. Joe Hartman has applied for an LOA due to an out-of-town work assignment, 30 August – 22 November,and this was approved by the board. Karel Sigtenhorst suggested we come up with response letter to notify members that their LOAs have been approved. As for the members listed who have not made any of the meetings, it was suggested that a form letter be created that can be sent to these members encouraging them to attend. Mike Lehnherr volunteered to draft up a form letter and send it to President John Donovan for approval. Mark Gerges made a motion to approve the amended Secretary’s report andthis was seconded by Teri Yunghans. The motion was passed unanimously.

6.Treasurer’s Report. Teri Yunghans distributed theProfit & Loss Report, July2010 and the Balance Sheet As of July 31, 2010 and answered board member’s questions. A progress report was given on a Rotarian who is making up payments for delinquent dues.

7.New Business.

(1) President John Donovan reported that he had spoken to Beau Kansteiner about changing his status to Exempt as he meets the 85 rule and any potential future absences would not be counted against him for missed meetings. Beau agreed that his status should be changed to Exempt at this time. All board members voted in favor of moving Beau to Exempt status.

(2) President John Donovan distributed the Presidential Citation 2010-2011 brochure and asked that board members become familiar with its contents. There will be some taskings that come out of these guidelines as we strive to meet and or exceed the expectations outlined by Ray Klinginsmith in this year’s Citation for the four avenues of service. John is required to submit our club’s assessment in March.

(3) Tom Gray made the suggestion that we go back to the old process of giving the general membership some highlights of what is discussed at the board meetings at the weekly membership meetings. The minutes would need to be approved by the board members first, then just a few highlights need to be presented and this could be done at the meetings which are the board’s responsibility. It was also discussed that perhaps the minutes can be published on clubrunner so any member can review them at their convenience and whether names need to be kept out of the minutes if they are going to be published for all to see.

8. Old Business.

(1)John reminded everyone of the District Governor’s visit on September 1st. The DG does not plan to spend the night but will just come for the day. Assistant District Governor, Moe Cougher, stated that the DG likes informal meetings and not a lot of fuss when he comes to visit the clubs. He will most likely want to meet with the board either before or after the meeting. Also, the DG usually presents the Silent Rotarian award at this meeting. This is President John Donovan’s pick but he asked for nominations from board members. A few potential nominees were discussed.

(2)Shay reported that she has decided to do a paper survey for the club on their meal preferences rather than to use survey monkey. She will conduct the survey the last two weeks in August.

9.There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:13 p.m.

John Donovan, Shari Hansen,

PresidentSecretary