The Rotary Club of Kirkland held its regular weekly meeting online on June 22, 2020.
The meeting began a bit after 6:12 p.m., as arranged by James Nevers, using his Zoom account. As usual, we waited a few minutes before starting, to give everyone a chance to ‘arrive’.
Attending were James Nevers, Dave Aubry, Steve Shinstrom, Margie Glenn, Mike Hunter, Gary Cohn, Dan Bartel, Joanne Primavera, Kristin Olson, Rick Ostrander, Stefan Landvogt, John Pruitt, Brandon Honcoop, Rich Bergdahl, Patti Smith, Rick Walter, Don Dicks, Amy & David Mutal, Jim Meniketti, John Woodbery, Bella Chaffey, Monica Fratita, Terry Cole, Pat Swenson, and Ernie Norehad. Let me know if I missed anyone.
President John Woodbery rang the bell.
Rich Bergdahl led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Going forward, only the ‘leader’ will have his/her mike on to avoid synchronization problems with the audio.
There were no guests or Visiting Rotarians.
We will do the break-out rooms at the end again, so there are no artificial time limits.
Rich Bergdahl posted information about this meeting on the Club’s Facebook page, with a backdrop of Scrabble tiles spelling out ‘The Rotary Club of Kirkland’.
James Nevers is investigating options of meeting again at the Woodmark, or ‘take-out’ from the Woodmark that we could then eat outside with proper distancing. He will send out a survey to members later in the week.
Next week is the Transition Meeting. John Woodbery will be at James Nevers’ house for the meeting. Going forward, we will use the same link and password form our meetings as we did for this meeting.
For those having bandwidth problems, it may help to use the phone for your audio and use Zoom only for video.
Rich Bergdahl complimented James Nevers and John Woodbery for keeping us all connected through the use of Zoom meetings.
James Nevers and Gary Cohn are working on updating our website so we can use it to make payments for all manner of Rotary-related activities. We could do ‘Happy Dollars’ by first paying before the meeting, and then saying our piece at our on-line get-togethers.
At 6:25 p.m., our speaker, Mayor Penny Sweet, began her talk, centering around our current extraordinary situation. She discussed the City’s Work Program. The City will pursue a ballot measure to fund another fire station. See the City’s website for details.
The City is working on a ‘Virtual’ 4th of July event.
All City activities have been affected by the COVID-19 and by Black Lives Matter.
She recounted the recent history of the City’s experience with COVID-19. The City already had a detailed Emergency Operations Plan in place, but still had to feel its way along. Nothing like this has happened within living memory.
The City will revisit School Resource Officers through Town Meetings. After public demand to have an officer in each school for safety against a possible shooter, there is now some demand to remove them.
Several Capital Projects have been delayed by the virus.
There were a number of questions for the mayor from attending Rotarians about the progress toward and the status of various projects.
At 7:08 p.m., we went to break-out sessions for about 15-20 minutes before adjourning about 7:30 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted
David Aubry
Acting Scribe