Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Bulletin October 4, 2023

 

Written by Patrick Hart

 

Rich Babjak opened our meeting with a prayer, a pledge, and Dennis Kratohwil leading us in singing “Love the One You’re Whiff” a little ditty about golf.  Hopefully, the golfers liked it.  

 

Carol August saw Peter Gabriel perform on Saturday night, who at 72 is still in tune and putting on a great show.

 

Scott Hezner bragged about fellow club member, John McDonald, who at age of 81 still carries his own bag around the golf course.

 

Dennis Kratowhil took a moment to praise our Monday night golf league committee, who have been doing this for thirteen years now.

 

Tom Gore has returned from a vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  He broke his right hand on the trip, but he then learned to play pickleball left handed.

 

Our guest speaker, Mayor Johnson, bragged about her youngest son, who is working in the Netherlands for three months and is loving the exposure to a different culture.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

A slew of club members are celebrating birthdays in October including Tim Klein, Steve Risley. Tom Miller, Jeff Harger, Rich Schoeneman, and John McDonald. Furthermore, Rick Mittelman has clocked up another Rotary Anniversary.

 

Our fall highway cleanup has been scheduled for Saturday morning October 14.  Meet at 7:00 a.m. at the southeast corner of Butterfield and 137 with a smile on your face and a determination in your soul to do a benevolent deed for Good Old Mother Earth.

 

In another service opportunity we are once again helping in the annual Libertyville Pumpkinfest, so sign up to come to Cook Patk at 8:30 in the morning of October 21.  Also as Patricia Bleck points out this event will help collect donations for the food pantry.  

 

Our president is shaking up our meeting schedule to make our Rotary Experience more exciting, and on October 25^th, November 15^th, and December 27, we will be gathering in the evening rather than in the morning.  We will commence at 6:30 on each of these dates at Mickey Finn's.  Rich is still thinking about what format changes we should make in the meeting to match this different environment.

 

The Buffalo Grove Club is doing a blanket collection.

 

The district is having a dispute over the position of governor.  Contact Rich Babjak if you want to object.

 

This week Ron Lapins presented his fellow Rotarians with an educational and entertaining trivia quiz on the month of October.  Did you know that Halloween originated in Ireland, or that some mean man tried to assassinate President Theodore Roosevelt in October of 1912.

 

Our speaker this week was Donna Johnson, the mayor of Libertyville, who relayed some of her thoughts on the state of the village.   Libertyville is a great community, but we need to beware of the danger of becoming too complacent in the desirable atmosphere we have created. Surrounding communities are attempting to duplicate what we have done right, and we cannot afford to take the competition for granted.

 

Ms. Johnson said that Covid has been a permanent detriment to the businesses of our town, since the pandemic persuaded many consumers to do more shopping online, which leaves them bestowing less patronage on local shops and restaurants. Another challenge is the growing number of vacancies in our commercial areas, which had been fueled by the fact that many landowners are receiving so many tax benefits from their properties that they do not feel a pressing need to keep them occupied.

 

Therefore, it is thus important for all of us to utilize and promote these enterprises.  One thing that the village has done to support the business community is passing an ordinance to govern outside dining which has become extremely popular during the warmer months.

 

Libertyville has an eighty-eight million dollar budget, and our mayor wants to maintain adequate sources of revenue to maintain our fine public services, which include recent substantial improvements in our parks and efforts to strengthen our storm water control projects.  Along these lines we have recently instituted a hotel rental tax and are making a greater effort to collect sales taxes for online transactions.  The village staff also makes a concerted effort to maintain good relations with the automobile dealers, who are our largest source of sales tax.

 

We passed around the hat in our monthly effort to support the township food pantry, and we collected $346.00 to help feed the hungry.

 

This week we had a $29.00 prize in our weekly drawing, which President Babjak quickly scooped up when his ticket jumped out of the bucket.  Jon Robb then received a chance to shoot for the big pot of $525.00 with 35 cards left.  In a sad moment for Jon though, he drew the two of hearts.

 

“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” Isaac Newton