May 15, 2023 Spokesman

The Rotary Club of Kirkland held a meeting on May, 15 2023 at SOI Thai Restaurant & Bar.

 

President-elect Gary Cohn called the meeting to order at 6:16 p.m.

 

Isabelle Kalisa led us in the pledge.

 

Attending were Pete Anderson, Bob Auslander, Scott Becker, Gary Cohn, David DeBois, Donald Dicks*, Jocelyn Ellison, Rashmi Garimella, Margie Glenn, Isabelle Kalisa, Jim Meniketti, Kristin Olson, Rick Ostrander, Joanne Primavera, John Pruitt, Karin Quirk*, John Storbeck, and Pat Swenson.  *Attended via Zoom.

 

Guests:

 

Elena Sellers, Jocelyn Ellison’s daughter, joined us as guest.  The last time she visited one of our Rotary club meetings was 23 years ago.  Now she lives in Redmond and works with the Overlake School.  Christine Bell, principal of Lake Washington High School, who also happens to be a former member of Rotary, is a guest of the club and will be introducing our guest of honor tonight, Mr. C.J. Green.  Christine introduced Tim Shultz, the senior associate principal at Lake Washington High School, who supervises the Career & Technical Education programs.  Mr. Green introduced Rodell Razor, his guest this evening, and with whom he has been friends since high school.  The club also welcomed a guest Rotarian, Kate Koslosky, who is visiting from the Rotary from San Luis, CA, and who three months ago moved to the Seattle area.  Kate is looking for a Rotary club to join and is visiting our club to become familiar with us.

 

Greeter:

 

Jim Meniketti staffed the table with the sign-in roster, and Pat Swenson staffed the Joker Pool ticket table.

 

Announcements, Club Business, Committee Reports:

 

Gary announced the Scholarship Award Ceremony and dinner will be held on June 5, and due to the likely larger than typical numbers of attendees, members should stay tuned for a possible change in venue.  This year we awarded $28,000 in scholarships to ten students.

 

The Leadership Transition Dinner will be held on the 20th of June, which is a Tuesday, and not held on a Monday because of the federal holiday on the 19th.

 

Gary thanked Margie Glenn who loaned us a Verizon Jetpack which helps us keep our meeting online.

 

Dave DeBois reported on rummage sale progress, and he explained to our guests that our fundraiser changed from the Great Puget Sound Duck Dash to the Great Kirkland Rotary Rummage Sale.  He also mentioned how much we raised from the Duck Dash in the past and what we did with that money.  This year we have decided to do something different and got inspired by the Bainbridge Rummage Sale, and we are trying to do the same as a fundraiser for Kirkland Rotary this year.  We put together a committee for the rummage sale, which will be July 1 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.  We hope to raise more funds than we did with the Duck Dash.  We are gathering all the merchandise and supplies necessary to make this happen.  Our advertising is nearly ready.  We are reaching out for more help as we need more than 100 volunteers.  We formed various committees, including volunteers, finance, food, technology and marketing, and assigned them job duties.

 

Rick Ostrander mentioned that EvergreenHealth offered us art works for the rummage sale. Cathy Feek, who is the art curator at Evergreen, put this together for us.  There are about 100 pieces of art work.

 

Pete Anderson, for the operations team, mentioned that we need a lot of adults and youth as volunteers, and requested members approach any other organization that can help with volunteers.

 

Jim Meniketti reported that the finance team is going to have another meeting on Wednesday at Brezza Condominium to go over job tasks and issues we must deal with on an immediate basis.

 

Rick Walter is in Italy, so there no report from the food team.

 

Rashmi Garimella reported for the technology and marketing team that we need to start posting on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and any other social media soon.

 

Joanne Primavera reported no news from the international committee.

 

Scott Becker reported that there is nothing new on the programs front; this year’s speakers are all set.

 

Gary announced that it is time in our agenda for our annual board elections; we need to elect next year's open officer positions and determine whether to endorse the board’s nomination of directors.  There were a total 17 Rotary members present in the meeting, not including the presiding officer, establishing a quorum.  Gary distributed the ballots to the members, and explained some of the language used in by-laws: the three offices in the group at the top of the ballot are people we elected over the past three years, and who automatically move into the next office in the series (vice president to president-elect, president-elect to president, president to immediate past president).  In the next group on the ballot are the new candidates nominated for election to the treasurer and secretary positions, John Storbeck and Rashmi Garimella, respectively.  Below that group is the set of five Rotary Avenues of Service Committee chair positions, which hold director roles on the board; that is, the first five are voting members of the board.  The balance are committee chairs or positions that are not board directors.  Our task for this meeting is to vote for the officer nominees, and to determine whether to endorse the board’s nominations for the five director positions and the other club leadership positions.

 

Gary noted in particular that we do not have a vice president nomination, nor nominations for vocational service committee chair or program chair.  Gary opened nominations from the floor for any of the officer positions, the open director position, and the program chair position.  Pete Anderson nominated Scott Becker for vocational service.  Margie Glenn and Bob Auslander seconded.  There were no further nominations.  Therefore, the nominations were closed.  Gary asked members to mark their ballots, and asked Pete to collect them and tally the votes for announcement after the program.

 

Happy Bucks:

 

There were several Happy Bucks collected during this meeting.  Scott Becker, Dave DeBois, Gary Cohn, and Rick Ostrander all expressed their happiness through donations to the club’s efforts.

 

Program:

 

Gary introduced the club’s Outstanding Educator Award program, and Christine Bell, principal of Lake Washington High School, to introduce the recipient for this year, marketing and business teacher and assistant football coach Carl J. “C.J.” Green.

 

Christine shared that Mr. Green is the hardest working person in the school of 105 staff members.  All are certainly competent enough, but Mr. Green brings exceptional passion to work every day.  The complete student store operation is run by his students and supervised by him.  He is the DECA Advisor and leads trips to various places to give students opportunities to learn through the DECA competitive events program.  He is also the Black Student Union advisor.

 

On behalf of the Rotary Club of Kirkland, Gary presented the award plaque for Outstanding Educator of Year 2023.  Mr. Green offered a few remarks and took questions from the members.  He also introduced his friend Mr. Razor, who offered congratulations and described their community-building work together.

 

Joker Pool:

 

The Joker Pool this evening was led by Pat Swenson. A total of 85 dollars was collected tonight.  The raffle was won by Dave DeBois, and no Joker was picked from the deck.

 

Closing Announcements:

 

Gary called on Pete Anderson to report on the election ballot.  Pete reported that all 17 ballots were marked in favor of the slate of officers proposed by the board of directors, with the addition of the vocational service chair nomination from the floor.  As a result, the following were elected or endorsed for leadership roles:

 

In closing, Gary asked his members their preference for the downstairs or upstairs of SOI for the meeting.  Members preferred downstairs because upstairs is too noisy.  Gary noted that on especially hot days, such as this one, we’ll meet upstairs because the sunroom is without air conditioning and becomes too hot for a meeting.

 

There are not meetings for the next two weeks.  The club will meet again on June 5 for the scholarship award ceremony.

 

Adjournment:

 

The meeting was adjourned at 6:55 p.m.

 

Respectfully Submitted,

 

Rashmi Garimella

Recording Secretary