August 28, 2019 Meeting

Another great meeting at The Mark Restaurant & Bar for our club. Last year's President, Amy Smith, was presented with a Rotary Citation Distinguished Club Award from the District. There to give her the Award was Past District Governor, Sandi Schwartz. Charlotte, Amy's daughter, joined us briefly before she had to go across the street to her acting gig. Li Gibbs' son, Steven and his girlfriend, Kayla, also joined us.

 

Jim Bell filled in for his wife, Donna Bell, and introduced our speaker, Russell Johnson, who has extensive experience in local politics. Many of us know him from Breakfast Rotary Club. Russell has three businesses. He does a lot of consulting. He has saved nine nonprofit organizations from insolvency. He, along with two other people, just bought Valley Ag Voice, an Ag business newspaper.

 

He talked about Associated Builders and Contractors Association, one of his clients, which is a national association that defends and advances principles of the merit shop in the construction industry. That is just one of the things they do. There are four chapters of this Association in California. They have training classes such as welding and electrical. Before 2015, in order to participate in one of those training courses, you had to work for or be sponsored by a member of the Association. After 2015, they formed a 501(c)(3) extension and now they can serve the general public.

 

At the end of our meeting, number of East Bakersfield Rotary Club led by their President, Quon Louey, crashed our meeting with a birthday cake for Past District Governor, Sandi Schwartz's husband, Richard. We all sang happy birthday to Richard and were invited by them to join their party after our meeting for some cake.