Rotary Club
of East Hartford
    High Gear

Volume 2| Issue 50, June 13, 2018

 

 
 
 
Remember - Golf Comm. Next Week

It was warm and pleasant at Goodwin College for our evening meeting this week. The opportunity to attend Rotary at the new time twice a month seems to be paying some dividends. We had 32 people gather for dinner, several of whom we haven’t seen in quite a while. Herb Tischover and Chuck Clark were both on hand, as were both O’Connors. We were also joined by Reverend Garlen Taylor again. Time to get him on the official roster, I’m thinking.

 

President Dave rang the bell to open the meeting. We all sang the Rotary song and did the Pledge. Anwar Hossain gave us our invocation, calling on the lord to look with compassion on all of us, taking away the arrogance and hatred that we see so much of these days, and replace them with bonds of love.

Things Taste Better In The Evening Time

We should all thank Jack Sayre once again for securing a great caterer for our evening meetings. Dinner was excellent, a choice of chicken or eggplant parmesan, pasta, vegetables and salad. We also had an assortment of treats for dessert. Next week, of course, we are back at the Ridge. Here’s hoping the best thing about lunch there is not the BJs cookie platter.

 

We had several guests this evening. Steve Jacoby had not yet arrived, so Rev. Taylor was forced to introduce himself as his invited guest. Larry Hangland introduced his wife Janet, who was verifying that we were actually having evening meetings. We can probably expect similar visits from other spouses over the next few months, although they probably won’t be as forthright about their reason for attending.)  Several members of the Buettner clan were present also, Bob’s wife Sandy and his granddaughters Quinn and Peyton. Peyton is undoubtedly a future Rotarian, as she just received an award from her school for performing 350 hours of community service. George Schoen and Art Bradbury led us in the welcome song.

 

 
O'Connors Keep Rotary On Their Mind

Sgt at Arms Nick Cecere’s Report :

 

                Herb Tischover and Chuck Clark caught up on their anniversaries and birthdays

                Bob Beuttner paid for his 3 favorite people

                Bill Saunders paid for Mary Martin doing a great job on the raffle this year

                Ned Lynch paid for his son’s high school lacrosse team making the state championships. Tim Lynch scored 2 goals and had 2 assists in the game

                Ruth Sheehan paid for her birthday. We all sang to her.

                Kevin Kickery paid for his sponsor Sheryl O’Connor being able to join us, looking forward to putting his boat in Maine into the water, and for everybody showing up tonight.

                Anwar Hossain and Wes Willett paid just because Nick asked them

                Frank and Ceil Collins paid for their great trip to Texas

                John and Sheryl O’Connor paid for missing a while, but Rotary is always on their mind

                Jairo Lemos paid for volunteering to teach financial literacy to third graders

                Nick Cecere paid because “Eagle Eyes” Buettner noticed that he did not have his badge, as well as for Justify winning the triple crown

 

Announcements :

 

                Mark Glass’ father passed away a few days ago. Let’s all keep him in our prayers

                President Dave received a card from Literacy Volunteers thanking our club for its support

                June 21 the Manchester Rotary is having a meeting where they will be awarding the checks for the Guatemala Water Project. $15 to attend at the Manchester Country Club.

                Next week (June 20) we are back at the Ridge.   

The Golf Committee will meet prior to the meeting next Wed at 11:30

                The Board will meet Monday night, 5:30 at the YMCA

                The installation picnic for President Elect Kevin is June 27th at 6pm. Please sign up or send Ceil Collins an email to ensure that we don’t run out of Pizza

 

                President Elect Kevin then announced that he didn’t mean to beat a dead horse, at which point Jack Martin flinched away from him. Seeing that Jack was out of reach, Kevin wanted to make sure that family members and friends were welcome at the picnic as well.

 

                Laura Floyd has 2 extra tickets for The Traveler’s PGA Tournament. Please call or email her if interested.

Sheryl O’Conner passed around a report on the performance of the Scholarship funds. For the calendar year 2017 we realized an 11.18% return net of fees.

 

The raffle was won by Bill Saunders.

Public Election Funds Stir Debate

Our speaker for the evening was Elona Vaisnys of North Haven. She is with the League of Women Voters. She spoke to us about Connecticut’s Citizen Election Program (CEP). CT is the only state that supports using public funds for statewide election campaigns. Candidates have the opportunity to raise a qualifying amount of funds on their own, and are then provided with a grant from the state to pay for their campaign expenses.

 

There are many rules associated with using public funds, such as minimum number of contributors and maximum amounts for the qualifying funds raised. All expenses need to be documented. While candidates are able to raise their own campaign funds, all of the current holders of statewide office (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Comptroller and Attorney General) took advantage of this program.

 

CEP is funded from the sale of unclaimed property in the state, NOT from taxes, and constitutes 0.000624% of the state budget. Money granted to qualifying candidate depends on the office for which they are running: $20k for House of Representatives, $85k for the Senate, $750k for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Comptroller, Treasurer or Attorney General, $6M for Governor. Any unused funds need to be returned to the state after the elections.

 

CEP is being challenged from both sides of the aisle, even though 80% of our current legislators used CEP funding in their last election campaign. Efforts have been made the past several years to cut the CEP program from the state budget, and the League of Women Voters is working on an education campaign to try to spread the word about CEP’s existence.   For more information about CEP you can google “ct cep” or go to http://www.ct.gov/seec/cwp/view.asp?a=3548&Q=489606

 

 

Important Upcoming Dates :

June 20th—meeting at noon at the Ridge (raffle drawing).

June 27th—Installation of Officers for 2018/19. It’s a 6 PM meeting (pizza picnic) at Kickery’ s, 38 Bancroft Road, EH, 860-944-6365. Rain option is Goodwin College. Need to know who is attending for food order.  

July 4th—no meeting.

July 11th—6 PM meeting at Goodwin

July 18th--noon meeting at the Ridge

July 23rd—this is a Monday meeting with Glastonbury Rotary for a meal at 6 PM at the Glastonbury Elks Club grounds. No Wednesday meeting.

August 1st—noon meeting at the Ridge

August 8th—Annual Sargant of Arms picnic at the Kickery’ s. 5:30 PM or whenever you get there.

 

That’s all for this week. See you at the ridge next Wednesday for a lunch that will in all likelihood will remind us how good our dinners are.

 

Wes Willett

 

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