Meeting Notes Sept 23

Pledge: Sam Grenils

 

Inspiration: Anne Greski talked about the importance of having the courage to undertake new things but doing your best at what you doing right now.  She offered a quote from Andre Gide – “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore.”  She also referred to the advice of Dr. Henry Cloud: 1) do your best at each step, 2) have the courage to take the next step, 3) do your best on the next step.

 

VISITING ROTARIANS:

Alex Young from Saratoga

Deidre Alexander from Campbell

Himanshu Vaishnav from SJSV

 

ROTARIANS WITH GUESTS:

 

Katie Perez guest of Frances Steward

Jeff Cho guest of  Orrin Mahoney

Sue Riskovec guest of Dave Stearns

Peggy Lee guest of Diana Ding

Kathi Hamilton guest of Joe Hamilton

Doug Carruthers guest of Joe Hamilton

Stella Su guest of Hung Wei

Tyler Haskell guest of Orrin Mahoney

Joe Simitian (speaker) guest of Orrin Mahoney

Mary Ellen Chell guest of Lee McCrumb

 

PRESIDENT’S CLUB:

 

Peter Halpin joined the President’s Club to celebrate the wedding of his son at the San Diego zoo on September 12. 

 

Barbara McArthur joined to inform members they can use the health app on their iphones to store medical information that may be important in the case of accident or medical emergency.  She described how this can be set up to allow emergency personnel access to the information even when the phone is locked. 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS OF UPCOMING EVENTS:

 

Annie Ho announced a club field trip to Levi’s stadium on November 14 for a Super Bowl 50 Experience.  The event will start at 1pm, but members should be there 15 minutes early.  The experience will include a behind the scenes tour and several other items.  S  To participate in this event, RSVP by October 30. Sign up by clicking here.

Tina Ferguson announced that the ASante fine wine and cuisine tasting event to benefit the RotaCare Mountain View Free Medical Clinic.  The event will be held Thursday, November 5 from 5:30 to 8:00 at the Sunnyvale Elk’s Lodge, 375 North Pastoria Avenue in Sunnyvale.  Cost is $55 per person and checks should be made out to RotaCare Bay Area.

 

 

PROGRAM:

 

County Supervisor Joe Simitian, Paul Harris Fellow and former state senator, shared thoughts on the current relationship between citizens and their government.  He noted that outsiders are currently doing very well in polls for the 2016 presidential election and movements such as the Tea Party and Occupy are driven by dissatisfaction with the current state of government.  He suggested that one reason for this mood is the result of “micro-aggressions” by government – actions or policies that make things more difficult or indicate a lack of caring and hence push people away. 

 

He then gave several examples of these micro-aggressions.  He mentioned a constituent who approached him at one of is sidewalk office hours to ask about the $40 fee for appeals of property tax assessments that the county kept even if the appeal was successful.  Seeing the constituent’s point, he asked county personnel about this, and after some back and forth the fee was removed for all appeals.  He also mentioned the fee for paying property taxes online.  After he asked county personnel how much it really cost to process the online payment, he found it was actually eighty-one cents, far less than the fee charged.  While there was a suggestion to actually charge the eighty-one cents, it was decided the more sensible course was to eliminate the fee.  The result was a dramatic increase in online payments resulting in the county having an additional $200 million dollars in the bank at an earlier date. Other examples he gave included fees by libraries for use by people not in their district (fees now eliminated), exorbitant charges for even local calls made from juvenile hall (policy now changed to eliminate exorbitant charges), and postage required for vote by mail ballots (no longer required).  He summarized by saying that none of these items was all that earth shattering, but each of these policies pushed people away and made them lest trusting of their government. Check out his full presentation here