CLUBRUNNER OVERVIEW.
REMINDER : President Don is offering prizes for the best "vocational" attire!! Also, note many special ANNOUNCEMENTS below.
Some members believe that our club has a pretty good web site. Our webmaster (club secretary) agrees, and hopes to demonstrate to you some reasons why, without boring anyone more than necessary, even those without computers. Frank Clifton joined our club in March 2016 and immediately accepted the opportunity to serve as secretary, and, as Jim Russell says, on the condition that we implement ClubRunner (CR). Frank came to Wenatchee in August 2015 from Mount Olive, NC, where he served in a small club as president and secretary. His wife Quita convinced him they needed to be here near their two sons and seven grand children.
The Web Site - ClubRunner is an award-winning software for clubs that "helps boost Public Relations, increase visibility, improve communication between members, and better organize their club. It is an online service comprised of powerful tools designed to give the club a strong online presence, maintain club data, organize events and volunteers, and help the club run more efficiently and easily." We began using it in April 2016 and have found it comprehensive and easy to navigate; it has many useful features that we have applied. Thus far, in addition to creating an informative web site home page, we have used it for: Membership profiles; Attendance records and data integration/synchronization with RI; email communication; archiving Appleseeds and meeting minutes; posting efiles such as Grants info and forms, and other documents; event registration; dues invoicing and payments; rotating photo carousel; and most recently, creating the new digital Appleseed "e-bulletin". In the meeting, Frank will use a live demonstration and hopes to show why CR is good for our club, and provide suggestions on how our members might find it useful in their own Rotary life (hopefully we won't spend the entire time on discussing how to login). Our web site web address is www.wenatcheerotary.org. Bring your questions. Topics for discussion- 1. A tour through the Home Page 2. CR login, necessary to get behind the home page to the Member Area 3. "My ClubRunner" a. member profile, including photo b. club directory c. dues and billing d. Sending and receiving emails; using mail stats Steps to login from Home page: (1) Click Member login in upper right corner; login window opens; (2) In login-name window, enter first.last.1365; (3) enter password, or follow instructions; use your profile email address. |
WEEK IN REVIEW, JANUARY 18. LAW ENFORCEMENT. Total violent crimes in Chelan and Douglas counties dropped from a high of nearly 270 in 1995 to just under 120 in 2015 – the lowest in the past 20 years, said Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett at our last Rotary meeting where he and Wenatchee Police Chief Steve Crown addressed the successes and struggles of their departments in our region. “It’s not just about fighting crimes. It’s about making this a place that we want to live in, that we want to raise our families in, that we want to retire in,” Burnett said. “People know across the state … that there’s some unique things about the quality of life here.” With 41 commissioned officers and 10 professional staff and a budget of $7.5 million, the Wenatchee Police Department responds to more than 20,000 calls per year, said Crown, who was named Chief in June 2016. Most of that budget, between 80 to 85 percent, is spent on salaries and benefits. “Like the sheriff, we’ve been very low on staffing. The sheriff suffers from the same problem that the police department does in hiring quality applicants,” Crown said. “We’re very selective.” The department is in the process of hiring it’s sixth officer since Crown was named chief. Every year, those 20K calls lead to more than 59,000 pages of reports. Some of those calls are 1,200 to 1,500 warrants resulting directly from their arrest activity. At any one time, the department has 8,000 items in the evidence locker and gets rid of about 1,200 per year, either surplused or destroyed. “Video requests and public disclosure requests are at an all time high. Generally, we run anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 public disclosure requests every year,” Crown said, estimating that an entire employee’s time is spent dealing with those requests. “We’re starting to keep track of that, right? Because we want to be transparent in government, but we also want to make sure we are properly communicating to our legislature who makes those laws how much that’s actually costing.” Sheriff Burnett said his department deals with approximately the same population and number of service calls as the Wenatchee Police Department, except spread over a wider region including Leavenworth, Cashmere, Entiat and Chelan. The Columbia River, the county lines, the city lines - crime doesn’t care. It’s not going to stop, so we need to do things to work together multi-jurisdictionally that can bring the best of our resources together,” Burnett said. His department carries about a $10.6 million budget, with $3.6 million as revenue from cities contracted in the county for their services. They have 60 commissioned staff, 17 support staff, and two campus security officers for a total of 79 personnel. With those resources, they are able to form special teams for a marine division, search and rescue, high-angle rescue rope, SWAT, and K9. “We want to prepare for the worst, and hope and pray for the best,” the sheriff said, emphasizing that they would like to combine resources for a SWAT team with Douglas County and East Wenatchee to meet national standards. The department is one of five or six in the state that does not control the county jail, which is operated by the state Board of Commissioners instead. The department answers about 15,000 calls per year. They seized about 384 grams of heroin last year, and disrupted 23 drug trafficking organizations. There are 140 registered sex offenders, but 12 are “absconded,” meaning they don’t know where they are and are not able to track them. While the region has seen a major decline in violent crime – the number of DUIs of either alcohol or drugs has increased from 5,500 in 2013 to 9,500 in 2017, coinciding with the new marijuana laws. Previously, 19 percent of people tested positive for alcohol and marijuana, and now that’s about 34 percent, which means the turnaround time at the state lab now takes six to seven months for results. Burnett said the state is not sending enough money back to local departments to help with this increased demand. More ... Announcements.
Respectfully submitted, Michelle Shermer (with minor edits/additions by Frank) Related web Links Program - AUDIO link (hear it in their own words)     |