Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
03/30/2015
Past President Liz Becher called the meeting to order at 12:30 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary. Liz let us know that with this week being spring break President Bill DeGraeve, President Elect John Starnes and also President Elect Nominee Jim Ruble are all out of town so she is conducting the meeting today. We then had a moment of silence in memory of Past President Bob Reinhart who we lost this past week. Cards are being passed around for the Reinhart family so please make sure you sign those.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Mike McIntosh
Greeters:
Hal Hutchinson and Eric Easton were our greeters and Eric introduced guests:
Eric introduced our visiting Rotarian Dennis Jack;
Robin Mundell introduced Alaina Stedille;
Bill Schilling introduced Dick O’Hearn
Steve Domonkos was absent so Eric introduced Steve’s guest Ethan Dexter;
Family of Rotary:
Liz welcomed Bill Schilling back from his work travels; she also welcomed Jim Limes back from wintering in Texas. Don Harris said his wife is better and back home.
Song and merriment:
Pinky Ellis started us off with a chuckle then Gary Pehrson led us in singing “Take me out to the ballgame” while doing the seventh inning stretch.
Rotarians of the week:
Liz Becher nominated Rod Aker for putting together the Rotarian Volunteer buttons for the McMurry funeral last week.
Mike McIntosh nominated Liz Becher for taking care of the minutes last week while he was out of town.
Jim Limes said that all of the Rotarians over age 70 are Rotarians of the “weak”
Jim Anderson nominated Jason DeWitt for his pink Easter Bunny slacks he was wearing today.
Club Announcements:
Liz let us know that the Theriaults and Simonsons are down in Panama this week doing service and scouting out the area for our international project and they will be giving us a report when they return.
Jim Anderson announced the Rotary bike ride, Ride to the Rockies (and Jackson) that Greg Brondos does every year will be Saturday May 16th. Everyone is invited; it is a wonderful activity.
Dave True announced that the District conference will be held at the Marriott in Fort Collins June 18-20; the club will pay the registration fee and half of up to 3 night’s hotel stay and the rest of the costs are on the member. Wendy in Dave’s office will be handling the hotel reservations as always and you need to register for the Conference online.
Mike McIntosh announced that he will be going to the International Convention in Sao Paulo, Brazil and will be happy to act as tour guide and translator for anyone who is going to attend. He also announced that the International dinner for our exchange student, Giulia, from Brazil will be held on May 9th instead of the original April 25th date. Please put it on your calendars and plan to attend to help Giulia raise money for her year-end trip. There will be authentic Brazilian food cooked by authentic Brazilians so it will be the best international exchange student dinner to date. Come hungry with plenty of money in your pockets.
Liz let us know that the focus for March is on the Paul Harris Society and she has placed handouts on the tables. Liz, Tim Havasi, Ronna Boril and Anthony Martinez have joined the Paul Harris society and are helping put the focus on pushing for our club to give more to Rotary International. Our club members’ donations to the PH Foundation help qualify us to receive District Grants. Right now we need to increase our per member giving in order to reach our club goal. We need to be at a giving level of $50 per member per year in order to qualify for the district grants that we need to help with our Rotary Park and other projects. She encouraged all of us to give more and to consider becoming members of the Paul Harris Society by donating $1,000 per year which comes to $85 per month in giving. Any and all donations are welcome and help with all of the Rotary projects.
Robin Mundell announced that on each table are some business cards which were the idea of a teacher from Mountain View School who wanted to teach her students how to pay forward the help that their school received from the McMurry Foundation. So in honor of Mick McMurry, Robin has printed out more of these cards and is encouraging everyone to take a card, do a good deed, mark the box then give the card to the person who you did the deed for and ask them to pay it forward with another good deed. The goal is to reach an additional 10,000 good deeds in Casper.
Blue Badge:
Gilda Lara, sponsored by Tom Crull, received her blue badge today. Congratulations.
Program:
Eric Easton introduced our program today, our very own Rotarian Angela Emery. Angela spoke to us about the Platte River Trails. Angela is the Executive Director of the Platte River Trails Trust, which is a citizen lead non-profit organization originally established in 1982 to develop a river pathway while preserving the scenic, natural and historic value of the Platte River. She passed out brochures that talk about the fund raising events and ways that the community can help and be more involved in the work they are doing. They also write grants to bring in money to help with the trails and work along the river; they also use one cent money from the city and donations from other foundations. The Tate Pumphouse was donated by BP. They have done $1.5 million in renovations on the pump house and it is now centrally located and is our very own trails center. Riverfest is one of the events that they hold in conjunction with Rotary and our Duck Derby, each year it just gets better. They have the spring clean-up event which will be held Saturday May 16th and all are invited to attend to help spruce up the trail system so it is ready for the summer. There are other various activities that they hold and you can see more about them on their website. A new event that they have coming up is the “Party with your pup” event which is especially for those people who enjoy using the trail with their dogs. It will be held July 9th and will be all dog themed food and activities. This year is going to be an exciting year for them as they will see projects get going that they have been planning and working on. First up is the pedestrian trail underpass at Fort Caspar, they have started the digging and are well under way to making that a safer place for pedestrians to cross under the street instead of above where the vehicles are. Amoco Park is the oldest park along the trail system and they are planning a learning and performance circle area at the park named the Bart Rea Circle, that will provide learning opportunities and an area to have outdoor concerts and such. This has been a very grass roots project with donations from many in the community and the real construction on it will begin in June. They will also be redoing the Amoco park trailhead area, using some grant funds from the state DOT, to make it a more inviting and easier to use area for parking. Also in fall of 2015 they will be doing some trail work to extend the Robertson Road trail further north so that it doesn’t just dead end in the middle of nowhere. Some future plans include moving the trails further west to accommodate the west side of town. They are looking at doing a trail to connect Paradise Valley to Robertson Road; a separate trail from Casper College up to Rotary Park is also in the plan. They also have plans to connect Wolf Creek to the trail system down from the Mountain View Shopping center to Morad Park. We have a beautiful 10 miles East to West trail system but they are always looking for ideas to make it better so that more people will come and use the trails. Last year they had the Project for Public Spaces group come in to look and give ideas on improvements. They came back with some great ideas, one of which they will be implementing thanks to a generous Rotarian from our club. This one will be a fitness area by the Pump House with five different fitness stations that people can use. A smaller project that they have done is to add lights for the old oilfield derrick that can change color for special events and holidays. They tried it out on Saint Patrick’s Day by turning the derrick green. This summer there will be all new trail maps along the system that will also have a lot of information other than just a map. They are very involved with the Respect Our River Campaign which is being launched at the spring clean-up on May 16th, it is designed to teach the public about the power of our river and how to respect the river and be safe using it. There will be five new life jacket lending stations along the river so that people can borrow the life jackets while recreating on the river to be safer. So why trails? They are free to all; they promote economic development as people will move to an area where there are things like our trails. They promote active healthy living and give us access to nature. We are proud of our trail system and encourage all to use them and enjoy them.
Past President Liz Becher adjourned the meeting at 1:18 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are meeting once again at the Parkway Plaza.
“Light Up Rotary”
