Aug 23 2016-Rotary Forum

By Dick Dannells

Pres. Greg Baker opened the meeting at 12:38 PM, with his “This date in history”: in 1814 the British Army entered Washington DC during the war of 1812; in 1989 Nolan Ryan became the first pitcher in major league history to register 5,000 career strikeouts; in 1962 the pop song “Loco-Motion" was written and became a number one hit.

John Traversaro gave the Rotary Foundation of Pismo Beach Minute by explaining how easy it is to contribute through wills, trusts, and bequests so that long after we are gone our Foundation will continue to do great works in the community. Jeff King gave a last-minute update for Summer Sizzle by requesting a few more volunteers for helping with parking for VIPs and on the barbecue team. Connie O‘Henley has just a few tickets outstanding and you can provide her with the status of these few tickets by responding to her email. She also requested that a volunteer come forward to keep track of the 250 $50 raffle tickets on a spreadsheet that she will provide. See Linda Osty for tickets to a special dinner that will add to the total amount for our fundraising activities. Michael Boyer reported on the number of items that are up for the live auction. We are dividing the number of donated very fine bottles of wine by awarding half to the highest bidder and the other half to the second highest bidder. Ashlea Boyer stated that as long as we give her descriptions of our silent auction items by Wednesday, they will be included in the silent auction list to be printed on Thursday. Pres. Greg urged everyone to be very good guests at the Edwards Barn as the owners bent over backwards to fit us in this summer.

Fine master Jim Lewis fined Ashlea Boyer $40 for her birthday, Don Weber $51 for his 51^st anniversary with Jackie and Bruce Beaudoin $20 for the return of his hat.

Jim Lewis introduced Kevin who worked his way up to Director of Aviation and Business Services for the Truckee Tahoe Airport District before taking this position with the San Luis Obispo airport. Kevin began by giving a footnote that after the recent expansion, the airport ranks 19^th  based on acreage for small U.S. airports, which are going through an unprecedented rapid change by mothballing the 28 passenger Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia in favor of the 50-passenger Canadair Regional Jets (CRJ200). The SLO Airport handled 300,000 passengers last year with two airlines, which is scheduled to add Alaska Airlines' flights to Seattle on April 13, 2017 with the 78-passenger Bombardier Q400. Kevin then gave a slideshow showing the construction of the new 50,000 ft.² 4-gate terminal, which compares to the present 1-gate 12,500 ft.² terminal. The new terminal will have multi-lane TSA checkpoints, expanded paved parking, expanded pickup/drop-off areas, single level design, and an open air sheltered concourse between check-in and boarding similar to that found in the Palm Springs airport.

“You are not stuck when you are unless you want to be.”