President Elect John Griffith called the meeting to order promptly at 12:21, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

 

 

Kris Galles and Lauren Griffith were our greeters today and Kris introduced the members who brought guests:

 

Liz Becher is sending around a card for Maribeth Plocek who lost her mother this past week.

Phillip Rael let us know that Carley Applegate also lost her mother this past week.

Anthony Martinez let us know that Kevin Christopherson’s Mom is in hospice and will be passing away soon.

 

Francisco Nominated Steve Loftin for taking him and his friends to Steamboat over the weekend.

Brad Cundy nominated Bill DeVore for helping him dig out over the weekend.

Jim Porter nominated Kris Galles for taking over the RYLA stuff and Bill will be a counselor.

Mike Stepp nominated Ann Ruble for the Nic hosting Opera Wyoming last week.

Bill DeGraeve nominated Brad Cundy for offering up his establishment for the local non-profits for fundraisers and especially for two weeks ago doing so for the Casper Mountain Ski Patrol.

Jim Porter nominated Leah Reeb for being elected to the CAEDA Board this past week.

 

 Chastidy Greenwood gave her classification talk today, she is a business development officer at Pathfinder FCU. She has two children a 23 year old daughter and a 20 year old son, and her favorite human is her 5 year old grandson Robbie. She goes to all of his activities. She is also part of Miamie Sleep’s non-profit, Mimi’s house that they are working on getting started for homeless teens in Casper. She comes from a family of business owners.

 

Deb Theriault announced that the Rotary Friendship exchange has been set this year for a District in South East England it will be May 21^st – June 1^st, she has the pre-application form if you are interested in attending. More information to follow.

Ronna Boril announced that February 7^th at 4:00 will be our next Club Social which will be a private tour and tasting at Gruner Brothers Brewery.

Kris Galles announced that she would appreciate help in finding youth leaders that volunteer in our community so that she can invite them to RYLA, she has a goal of sending 10 students this year.

Lisa Scroggins announced that the next new member orientation will be March 14, from 5:30 – 7:30 at Racca’s Pizza.

Steve Loftin announced that he committed the club to serve Food Bank of the Rockies once a month and next Monday will be the next opportunity to help so please plan on it after Club meeting next week.

Phillip Rael announced that there are sign-up sheets on each table to be judges for the NCHS Debate tournament this Friday and Saturday, please sign up and be a judge.

 

We had two great students today, Sydney Westbrook from Roosevelt HS, and from Midwest HS Crystal Lynn Turner.

 

President Elect John Griffith introduced our speaker today, Charles Walsh, CEO of CAEDA. Charles was here to give us an update on CAEDA and their accomplishments and goals. There are three parts to CAEDA, first the Economic Development Joint Powers Board which was State of WY Title 16 partnership between the County and the City, this 5 member board is actually the client for CAEDA. CAEDA is the public side of what they do and is funded by public funds. Then there is the third component which is Forward Casper, which he encourages everyone to become part of Forward Casper which guides the behavior of CAEDA. Two years ago when he took over as CEO they put together a new model for Economic Development which is very market driven and very purposeful, focused on the knowledge economy and how to keep the younger generation here by creating opportunities for them here. They created the vertical markets for focus which are based on the strengths of our region. They are three vertical buckets, Energy, Medical, and Technology Aerospace and Defense. By pursuing these three verticals they also create opportunities in the horizontals of Finance, construction, education, and Real Estate. Some of the projects are like the 33 mile which was a water and sewer project out towards the airport which they modified and extended the project out to the west side of the airport which helped with more construction out there. Another project was the David Street Station which has been huge for the City. They are also very big on Entrepreneurship and developing new businesses here or expanding existing current businesses. They do this through the incubator and they developed finance opportunities for new and existing businesses called breakthrough 307 which has 20 members who make investments in these businesses. With a provision in the tax law there was an opportunity for each Governor to identify low income community areas to target for tax breaks and help to do some development in those areas. They put together a plan to get a grant to support the development over the next 10 years in these areas. They will be putting these plans on a website to try to bring in more moneys, www.opportunitycasper.com where you can go and see these opportunities. He then showed us their goals from the past year and how they did in hitting those goals. They hit some, they came close on others and they failed in some. They have managed to do a lot of good in the community for economic development. They made great strides in the medical industry with tele medical opportunities for the Hospital to help other doctors around the state with medical diagnosis over the phone and video. They helped train and find more scrub techs by working with CC to do a certification program. Also they are working on non-emergency medical transportation to help people get to their medical appointments. Technology, this is an area where we can use the local workers like welders etc. rather than lose them when the energy industry busts. They put together a consortium of companies to develop a market with opportunities for local workers. They are also working on getting UWCC and CC to develop a 4 year degree program in the STEM areas, which there is not one currently. Energy, they pursued a wind tax initiative but it failed to pass, they are going to revisit this. Finance they had an entrepreneurial boot camp for students around the State which was very successful. They recruited 3 new companies and are working towards more companies coming into Casper and Wyoming. Indirectly they helped create over 300 jobs but directly only about 35-40. They feel that they need to do a better job of getting their message out to the business community in Casper in order to be more successful. They are working to bring in the VA skilled nursing facility to Casper as Casper is the only location that will work for the Veterans and he wants our help to make sure that we get this opportunity to have this facility to do what is best for the Veterans of Wyoming. They are trying to get all of the Cities and Towns together in communication and to stop competing against each other but to help each other find the proper fit for the opportunities that come around so that Wyoming competes with other States instead of amongst each other. They are working on becoming more transparent, they are a private organization but they still provide the budgets and everything to the public except employees pay. They work together with the City and with the Wyoming business Council. He thanked the board members and everyone who helps them with all they do and showed us the team he works with. They are raising the bar to higher goals and plan on continuing to partner with lots of groups in order to make things work. They are also going to be doing a rebrand of the organization in order to focus on the messaging so people have a better understanding of what it is they do.

 

President Elect John Griffith concluded the meeting at 1:24 letting us know that next week we will be at the Ramkota. The speaker will be The Casper College Workforce Training program.

 

“Be the Inspiration”