Dr. Angélica Garcia is an educational leader who is passionate about issues of access, equity, and student success in higher education. Dr. Garcia serves as the 6th Superintendent/President of Santa Rosa Junior College, which has served the Sonoma County for over 105 years and recognized as an Hispanic Serving Institution since 2014. A Central Valley native, she believes community colleges provide liberatory educational experiences that disrupt the status quo and support upward social mobility of students and the broader community. She is Co-Founder and Executive Board member of COLEGAS, a statewide organization focused on advocacy and development of Latinx professionals in the California Community Colleges. Dr. Garcia serves on the Puente Project Advisory Board and Pepperwood Preserve Board. Appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly, she served as the Vice-Chair for the Student-Centered Funding Formula Oversight Committee, charged with reviewing the legislation, data, and its impact on the California Community Colleges. She has been a fellow with the Aspen Institute for New Presidents, the National Community College Hispanic Council, and the UC Davis Wheelhouse Institute, all of which are leadership programs focused on producing equitable student outcomes. In April 2023, Dr. Garcia was appointed to President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) by President Biden. PCAH advises the President and the heads of U.S. cultural agencies on policy, philanthropic and private sector engagement, and other efforts to enhance federal support for the arts, humanities, and museum and library services. Dr. Garcia is a proud second-generation born Chicana and first-generation college graduate, who earned a doctorate in educational leadership at San Francisco State University, a Master's in Social Work at San Diego State University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal and civic studies at Saint Mary’s College of California.
The State of the City, by City Council Member Dianna MacDonald
Our speaker for May 16, 2024, was Dianna MacDonald, a Santa Rosa City Council member representing District 3. Diana was the Vice Mayor from December 2022 to December 2023. She is currently the Violence Prevention Program Chair and on the Long Term Finance and Audit Committee. She also currently serves as the legislative advocate for the California State PTC, a director for the Rincon Valley Education Foundation, and the co-chair of the California State Literacy Task Force. She has a long history working on a variety of important projects, including the Commission on the Status of Women, the California School Board Association, and on the Board of Directors for Zero Waste. She is a multi-generational Sonoma County native; her great grandfather moved to Sonoma County during the Great Depression!
Dianna took us on a whirlwind tour of the status of the City. The City Council has been working on several key objectives, including achieving organizational excellence, delivering housing for all, reducing homelessness and its impacts, promoting economic and community vibrancy, ensuring a health and safe community for all, building a sustainable infrastructure, and addressing climate change. These objectives are consistent with the City Council’s newly published goals for this fiscal year. The City’s recent accomplishments include ongoing efforts to improve the City’s website, updating emergency preparedness, providing vouchers for housing subsidies, attracting 89 current projects for affordable housing, promoting infill housing downtown, reducing encampments and relocating people, remodeling the Finley Aquatic Center, designing and constructing an overpass linking the College area with the westside of the freeway, among other things.
The City has created a new financing district for downtown and is actively working on potential plans for a downtown convention center. Fiscal responsibility objectives have led to an ongoing evaluation of the City’s services contracts, including efforts to determine how much these contracts cost the City. The City is in tough negotiations with its employees as well. Nevertheless, staff retention and parity with County employees is also a key goal of the City Council. The City has budgetary concerns since its projected expenditures exceed projected income. But there is good financial news: Communications and Government Relations (works with grants) received $21mm in grants and Congressman Mike Thompson helped with developing a $900,000 earmark for the Realtime Crime Center. The Fire Department will add 12 new employees as a result of a SAFER grant from FEMA.
The police department has been looking at bringing back school resource officers. Decisions about the use of resource officers are made by the schools. However, the decision to restart the program, which will cost $2.7mm, will be the City’s. The City has also approved an additional 2 public safety officers for the downtown area. It has developed the successful In Response program, which aims to have the right people responding to mental health calls from the public. In Response received 4,759 call last year; 3,568 calls were diverted from the police, which allowed the police to concentrate on actual public safety issues. The police department will also be adding a new substation in Roseland. The department has received 234,000 calls this fiscal year. There has been a decrease in homicides and shootings, but an increase in the number of illegal guns. Illegal side shows have decreased 89% this year after the police began cracking down on them. The Violence Prevention Program has been making $750,000 grants per year to different programs dealing with this problem.
Dianna also mentioned that she would like to see us help out in the Park-A-Month volunteer program. Check out SRCity.org/ParkAMonth to see how you can help. Many thanks to Dianna for her excellent State of the City message and for all of her dedicated work as a City Council member.
Click HERE to see a limited-time recording of Dianna's presentation.
On a regular basis, our resident photo pro Warren Smith, submits pictures of what is going on at the weekly meetings. You can always find the most recent pictures at the websites photo journal called "Meeting Sighting" Please note that all the meeting photos for the entire Rotary year are at this location with the most recent on the last page.
Thanks for all the great pictures Warren!Link to Meeting Sightings. The most recent are on the last page!
EAHS Lobos Marching Band Rocks the Santa Rosa Rose Parade! 1st Place!
Led by Conductor-Teacher Efrain Nava, Elsie Allen High School combined with Cesar Chavez Language Academy musicians wowed Saturday's Rose Parade along Fourth Street! Drum Major, Anastasio Tovar kept the tempo strong.
Lobo Color Guard line jumped and spun pom-poms introducing the band in their new cape and plume uniforms.
The judges decision came on stage in Old Courthouse Square.
To hear and see Elsie Allen shine affirms Sunrise Rotary's support of the campus: Instruments, costumes, scholarship give substance to the motto "Dream~Plan~Achieve"!!
M.J. Girard is currently an on air personality on KOWSfm.com His “Roots of Rock” is broadcast every Sunday morning at 7 AM
For well over a century, Rotarians have welcomed their brethren into their meetings, to share warmth, ideas and in most cases, a meal. Visiting Maui, Lynda and I looked forward to seeing our family and I, attending a local meeting.
The Kihei Wailea Rotary Club meets on Wednesdays and consists of a core membership of dedicated men and women, who, as clubs worldwide, step up to the plate to solve issues locally as well as on distance shores, e.g., sanitation for children in Nepal, eye care in Delhi and medical and shelter supplies for war torn Ukraine, as well as WHO and UNICEF.
We are fortunate that our club mirrors the dedication found around the globe of the ideals and positive impact Rotary International has achieved over the many decades.
This year in particular will offer many opportunities to serve our community, and the communities worldwide. I am proud and grateful to be part of this outstanding organization, as are everyone, lucky enough to be called a Rotarian.
Local clubs sponsor lifesaving stations around the seaside.
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered, "Sure, why not." So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow and rested.
A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.
A spinal surgery for a child in Burundi was made possible by the coordination of Rotary members on multiple continents. The young girl, named Maïssa, had early-onset scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. A team of Belgian surgeons working in the country found that she was in urgent need of intervention. A local doctor was not available, and her family could not afford to travel out of the country. So the doctors contacted Pierre De Vriendt, a member of the Rotary Club of Gand Maritime-Gent Haven with experience coordinating medical missions, to help recruit surgeons from India in hopes of finding a lower-cost option. Word of the girl’s need eventually reached Els Reynaers Kini of the Rotary Club of Mumbai Sobo, which supports the work of the Spine Foundation in India with the help of a Rotary Foundation global grant. In November, two doctors, Abhay Nene and Harshal Babulal Bamb, traveled at their own expense to Burundi, where they performed the first operation on Maïssa, now 6. Reynaers Kini, who intends to expand the medical work in Burundi, relays the gratitude of the girl’s mother, Martine Karabona: “Not only has Maïssa been given a new lease on life so she can grow into a confident woman, but along the way all of us have grown really close and are now truly one global family spread across India, Belgium, and Burundi.”
This story originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.
Rotary projects make a difference in communities around the world.
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A spinal surgery for a child in Burundi was made possible by the coordination of Rotary members on multiple continents. The young girl, named Maïssa, had early-onset scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. A team of Belgian surgeons working in the country found that she was in urgent need of intervention. A local doctor was not available, and her family could not afford to travel out of the country. So the doctors contacted Pierre De Vriendt, a member of the Rotary Club of Gand Maritime-Gent Haven with experience coordinating medical missions, to help recruit surgeons from India in hopes of finding a lower-cost option. Word of the girl’s need eventually reached Els Reynaers Kini of the Rotary Club of Mumbai Sobo, which supports the work of the Spine Foundation in India with the help of a Rotary Foundation global grant. In November, two doctors, Abhay Nene and Harshal Babulal Bamb, traveled at their own expense to Burundi, where they performed the first operation on Maïssa, now 6. Reynaers Kini, who intends to expand the medical work in Burundi, relays the gratitude of the girl’s mother, Martine Karabona: “Not only has Maïssa been given a new lease on life so she can grow into a confident woman, but along the way all of us have grown really close and are now truly one global family spread across India, Belgium, and Burundi.”