Our Rotary Club Meetings are at the Lake Stevens School District Educational Service Center located at 12309 22nd St NE. We start at 7:30 am. There is a robust continental breakfast available beforehand. Visitors are always welcome. Our mailing address is PO Box 908 Lake Stevens, WA 98258.
This week's meeting will give us an update on the Wine Tasting & Auction Fundraiser in addition to other activities that the Club is doing.
Contest: Be the first person to correctly identify the location from where the photograph that is at the top of this bulletin and our Club website was taken by 7:30 am Friday, March 4th. NOTE that there was is a subtle change to the previous photo. Does it help with guessing the location? Send your guess to the Editor.
Several Rotarians were on hand at the reception honoring Police Chief Dan Lorentzen for his 25 years of service to the City of Lake Stevens. The reception was last Friday at the Lake Stevens Fire Conference Center. Gary O'Rielly joined several community leaders, fire and police in praising the Chief for his dedicated service from Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary, to Everett Police Chief Dan Templeton, LSPD Officer Jim Barnes, President of the LSPD Guild, Fire Commissioner Troy Elmore, Ron McEntire and Elliott Cheap of the Lake Stevens Lions Club, Commander Tony Morea American Legion Post 181, Lake Stevens School District Superintedent Amy Beth Cook and the Lake Stevens Kiwanis. The Conference Center was equally filled to almost capacity with local citizens, police and fire personnel from Lake Stevens as well as the surrounding communities including Seattle. Special presentations were given by Rotary members, Fire Chief Kevin O'Brien & Fire Captain Ron Rasmussen and from the Lake Stevens Police Department by Lt. Jeff Lambier and Administrative Supervisor Julie Ubert.
Our program last week was Mary Swenson, Interim City Administrator talking about the homeless in Lake Stevens and the impact on city services. Mayor John Spencer and Mary have approached the County seeking assistance. The County acknowledged that this isn't a city problem but a county problem. Every city is affected by large populations of the homeless. Lake Stevens needs to adopt a city plan to work with mental health agencies and the churches to help with the problem. Also, the City is looking at developing an ordinance that would give the police the tools to deal with the homeless issue. Arlington and Marysville have developed ordinances which has moved some of the homeless to Lake Stevens. Interesting that the city has very few panhandlers perhaps that because of the roundabouts in Lake Stevens.
Mary mentioned that there was a homeless camp just off Lundeen. She did mention that everyone does have rights including the homeless so the City contacted the Sheriff's Department to help deal with the homeless camp. They posted a clean up date and began the clean up of that camp on the date listed on the posting. Unfortunately, the police and sheriff's departments cannot use regular citizens to help in the cleaning up of the camp for health reasons.
In other comments, Mary spoke about the transition of the City to a new City. Mary has lived in Lake Stevens for over 30 years and watched the many changes that have been occurring with all of the new housing around 20th Street SE. She stated that the City needs to be a city friendly environment and predictability for new development and new businesses. Staff needs to accept and relish the new business-friendly environment that they are working in and accept it. In other news about the City, they are working on a sub-area plan with predictability for the 20th Street SE corridor and downtown. On transportation there is money in the budget for the US Hwy 2 Trestle but its still in the House and Senate budgets. The Mayor and City Council are going to Washington, DC to ask our congressional delegation for help fixing the Trestle. And, right now, the Mayor and Council are working on prioritizing the city street issues.
Mary is an very big asset to the City given her background and working relationships in the legislature and throughout the state. Mary retired from the City of Marysville in March 2010, joined Strategies 360 working with a variety of clients from municipalities to tribal interests and private industry. Another great program. Thanks Sam.
Our volunteers are simply amazing. Working on this past Saturday, eight Rotarians, three Interact members, the Mayor and three friends helped us on our Roadside Clean Up project. We tackled 16th Street, Main Street and Vernon Rd. All of the participants spent at least three hours working on Saturday with a couple spending a little more time. That amounts to 46 hours of volunteer time. Its truly amazing the amount of roadside garbage we picked up on these roads. Pictured here is the Rotary truck and the mound of garbage. Thanks to Joyce for providing the coffee to jump started our project and Jim H. for providing the Rotary truck to haul the garbage to the dump site. A really big thank you to all of the participants.
Our Cub Scout Pack is having their annual Blue & Gold Banquet on March 5th. The banquet celebrates the birthday of Scouting in America. Blue and Gold are the colors of Cub Scouting. Our Club sponsors the Pack that primarily serves Glenwood Elementary School. Rotarians are encouraged to attend the Banquet to thank the volunteers that provide the Scouting program to the boys of the Pack. Please let me know if you can come to the banquet. It would be great to have some of our members there besides myself. Thank you!
You can now purchase tickets for our Fifth Annual Wine & Beer Tasting Plus Silent Auction Fundraiser. Payment information is done through a secure server. Sign up yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbors, anyone who wants to participate.
The Tasting and Auction is on Friday evening, April 29th at the Jackson Conference Center at Everett Community College. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
If you would like to donate something for the auction please contact Bill Demeroutis.
"Primarily Rotary seeks to apply the theory of service to business and community life...This is expressed in the first part of our code of ethics: To consider my vocation worthy and as affording me a distinct opportunity to serve society. He Profits Most Who Serves Best is a less ideal expression, but the suggestion of egoism is removed by the added words Service Above Self."
