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Tim Hunt gave the invocation while Wally Cole was our song leader. Randy Kempfer reported on the Rotary Speech Tournament held the prior Saturday with 18 teams participating and Rotary's efforts at the concession stand raising $900 to give to our speech team. Kathy Austvold, filling in for President Dan at the podium, reported that our outbound exchange student next year, Erika Lahti, has been assigned to Belgium, and then called Zack Stach and Wally Cole forward to present newest club member Zack with his badge. Our brags and fines started with Wally welcoming his son-in-law and business associate as our newest member, followed by Mary Pettit for missing some meetings and to reflect on a birthday celebration she just attended in Arizona for a remarkable 80 year old women, with many illustrious acquaintances. Buzz Lundeen reported he presented his brother David with his honorary club membership certificate while John MacFarlane rose to compliment the Russell-Josefson household for its holiday decorations. Dave Johnson reported on his experience working at the Speech Tournament, referring to it as enlightening to see all the students dressed up, not a single one of them wearing tennis shoes. This writer reported that his team finally finished a jigsaw puzzle within the allotted two hours at this year's St. Paul Winter Carnival Contest, with the winning team finishing a 500 piece puzzle in 25 minutes 16 seconds, while Bob and Lois' team finished 126th out of 149, in one hour eight minutes nine seconds. Lois Josefson introduced our program, Annie Deckert from Greater Fergus Falls to talk about the non-profit's activities. Annie Deckert, the Chief Executive Officer of the organization, grew up in Fergus Falls and lived here her first 22 years before going on to attend St. Cloud Stat University. She then went to work at Big Lake as one of three city planners for a town of 5,000 persons. Annie next went to Elk River, in 2008, when the recession his, working there as the Director of Economic Development. She obtained her Master's Degree while in Elk River and her fiancé is from that community. In 2011 she and her fiancé started an economic development consulting company in the metro area which he is still running while Annie is up here. Greater Fergus Falls was created in July of 2018 and currently consists of an 18 member board. (The Executive Assistant is NeTia Bauman.) The board acts as a facilitator for businesses interested in coming here or expanding their current operations. It is not part of the City and does not report to either it or the Port Authority, although they do work closely together. Annie came on board in May of 2019 and described Greater Fergus Falls as the face of economic development. It is also now serving as the main point of contact for the Port Authority and its properties. Greater Fergus Falls wants to be transparent to the community and she identified its goals as 1) business development and attraction; 2) marketing and promotion; 3) partnering effectively with other entities and 4) creating organizational stability. Its website can be viewed at greaterfergusfalls.com, and it currently lists 82 properties on it for development (there is an additional 15 properties for sale but the owners don't want their sites listed but are utilizing the assistance that Greater Fergus Falls can offer). She noted that a lot of people redeveloping in Fergus Falls don't live here. Annie noted that Fergus Falls is 26% more affordable to live in than Fargo and 39% more affordable to live in than the Twin Cities, with development fees in our town minimal compared to the other aforementioned communities. When asked by a Rotarian what we can do to support the mission of Greater Fergus Falls Annie responded that speaking positively about the community would be of greatest assistance. |
