Written by Patrick Hart

 

 

 

Tucker Olson opened the meeting with a prayer, and John Schueler led us in singing Auld Lang Syne.

 

Our winter fund-raiser is scheduled for February 23, 2018, and Steve Risley reminded us that we need more than the four raffle items that have already been donated.  

 

Diana Taylor still is looking for a candidate for president elect.

 

Steve Risley’s son is getting married this weekend in Lexington Kentucky.  

 

There was no Fun and Frolics, and inventing another excuse to collect money anyway, Tucker Olson appointed Pat Hart to conduct the meeting on January 3 and Tom Zengeler to conduct the meeting on January 10.
 
PROGRAM: 

Our program today consisted of an array of craft talks enabling us to become better informed about what some of our members do when they are not attending Rotary meetings.

 

Tucker Olson led off by explaining that he recruits candidates for in house legal staffs for corporations.  The clients tend to be large corporations, since small businesses do not normally maintain their own lawyers in house.  He has done over forty searches for General Electric over the years.  He works for a retained search firm, which means he is paid for conducting a search whether the candidate is hired or not.  This criteria allows him to spend more of an effort concentrating on whether he has found a good match, and in thirty years in the business, he has never had a candidate he placed let go.  On a pro bono basis he also spends a significant amount of time without charge counseling people who are in transition between jobs.

 

Ron Lapins has been a mortgage broker for the last forty-two years, and this is the only job he has ever held.  When he started in the 1970s credit reporting bureaus did not have a scoring system and lenders had pretty strict standards to qualify for a mortgage, which required them to do a better job of getting to know the potential borrower than they do today.  Over the years this loosened up to the point where some people say that anyone who could breathe could obtain a mortgage.  Unfortunately, this practice led to a major collapse in the housing market, which brought about some reform.  Lenders now have automatic underwriting where a formula based on income and credit scores determines whether a person will obtain a mortgage.  Ron has some concern though that standards are starting to loosen up again.

 

Richard Mittelman is a lawyer, who at one time did a lot of litigation, but who now mostly handles small transactions.  He is particularly interested in education law and serves as a hearing officer for a number of school districts.  As a hearing officer he writes up the case presented by each side in expulsion hearings, although he does not make the actual decision.  The law has recently made it tougher for schools to expel students, requiring the school to first offer other services to the student to correct the problem.  

 

Scott Hezner is architect, who spends most of his time on commercial projects.  He considers himself to be helping people to build structures that meet their business goals.  This is an emotional process and clients at the beginning of a project frequently do not have a very good idea of what they want.  He sometimes finds small projects the most satisfying, because they can be very meaningful to the participants.  Scott worked on the recently completed parking garage in downtown Libertyville, and he loved it, because it affected so many surrounding property owners, who’s needs had to be coordinated. 

 

RAFFLE: 
Our progressive pot was up to $1,057.00 this week with only 15 cards left, and Dave Potts made a gallant effort to take the funds home.  Alas! Alas! Life is not always fair, and after he pulled the 4 of diamonds, the pot rolls over to 2018.  Doug Fendon then won the $29.00 weekly prize.

 

Fun & Frolics: Dennis Kratohwil

 

Greeter and Prayer: Teri Dreher

 

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."   Bill Vaughan