It's May and our first meeting of the month! Many of us enjoyed the District Conference in Corning over the weekend and were happy to continue the good vibes with our Club here at home!

 

Jack started us off with the Pledge, followed by America the Beautiful. Jack continued with Reflections on the awards Naples received at the conference. We received an award for our literacy program. We placed first for our Vocational Service supporting the Naples Open Cupboard and first place for the Youth Exchange ski weekend overnight and breakfast at Trinity. We received second place awards for Community Service for creating the pickleball courts and second place for all of our International Service to Shelter Box, Uganda Sewing Machines and Building Minds in South Sudan.

In addition, we received a first place for our poster on Expanding Our Reach to Youth, a first place tie for our men's golf team and approval of our District Grant proposal. AND Uryu gave a great presentation to the entire group (hundreds of Rotarians) about his experiences this year! On Sunday morning, we remembered our members who passed away this past year - Alex Leto and Vicky Martin. Trees will be planted in their memory.

It was quite a fun and successful weekend! There was not an official award for attendance but we aced that too, with 19 Naples Rotarians and 4 Exchange Students attending! That's a third of our members - WOW!

 

Frank introduced our guests today - Rose, Chad Hunt from NCS, Anna and Uryu. May birthdays are Cindy, Kevin, Kelli, Shanna and Sherry. Meg and Mike celebrate their 31st anniversary.

 

Announcements: Please consider helping our Club by volunteering to be a program coordinator. A small committee would work well for this too! * The Great Grape Derby is this coming Saturday. We will sell 50-50 raffle tickets beforehand and the "Grapes" hit the water around 1 pm. All tickets should be returned to Jill and Marty already. See you there! * May is Youth Service Month. Jack shared photos of our current outbound students: Parker, Eliza and Lyra and inbounds Anna and  Uryu. Next year's outbound students, Emma and Erica, will go to France and Germany respectively. They  participated at the Parade of Flags at the Conference and received their Rotary blazers!

 

Our program today was presented by Rotarian and NCS Superintendent Kevin Swartz and Chad Hunt who gave details of the proposed school budget for '25-'26. Kevin thanked Rotary and Naples in general for the support we give to Naples Central School. He said that local, state and federal funding has an impact but the goal of NCS is to offer a great program in a small district.

Significant changes are coming: Regents will not be a requirement, rather the focus will be on encouraging students to do well in projects, internships and personal skills. Declining enrollments will have an impact on budgets across the state. Naples has declined 38% since 1980. There are 568 students now but quality of education is still most important. Inflation in costs of health insurance, salaries and utilities has been offset by staff reduction by attrition rather than layoffs.

Kevin spoke to the proposal to purchase property being sold by Hazlitt. It is adjacent to the Elementary School and extends to Lake Niagara Lane. Purchase would provide future opportunities for the district and prevent sale to unknown buyers. Future use would be voted on at that time. The cost of the land equals the cost of one EV bus.

Chad reviewed a lot of the information found in the budget pamphlet mailed in the last week. Our district contains 8 municipalities, some have not had recent assessments. Overall, the average tax rate is $12.68 / $1000 home value. Our current EV buses did well in nice weather but required multiple charging times per day in the cold. These buses can't be used for travel to other districts as charging stations are not there. Kevin and Chad have been asked to share their experience with EV with other districts.

The budget vote is Tuesday, May 20th from 7am to 8pm in the High School library. Voting will also include two school board positions and the Naples Library budget and board.

 

The Ace of Hearts was at $376.50 with 7 cards remaining in the deck. Kevin had #5426 but drew the 10 of Hearts. Happy Bills went to the NSC presentation, the GREAT conference, Albie's painting donated to the  Hospeace Monte Carlo Night, thanks for the efforts getting the awards and grant done on time and for Judy ringing the bell at finishing her treatments.

 

We finished with the Four Way Test and Jack rang our bell to adjourn.