Greetings fellow Rotarians! We started today’s meeting by inducting Janet Cooper into our Club as our 65^th member.  If you haven’t done so already, please take the time to introduce yourselves to Janet and make her feel welcome to the Club.  Our speaker today was Max Levy, who was on hand to discuss the proposed Essex budget.  Max explained that the Town has focused on consolidating certain services provided by both the Town and the Village in an effort to make things more efficient and more cost effective.  He pointed out that in the four years since beginning this process, savings of $1.44 million have been realized. Although this year’s proposed budget represents a $595,000.00 increase over last year’s budget, the continued consolidation efforts have resulted in the budget increase being a good amount less than it would have been without consolidating services.  Thank you to Max for taking the time to share this information with our Club!

 

 

            Today, Dave Barra was sworn in as one of our State’s newest Superior Court judges.  Congratulations to Dave on this achievement! Due to Dave’s upcoming obligations, he will not be able to serve as our Club’s next President and he will also need to step down from his position as the Chair of the Scholarship Committee.  With that in mind, we are in dire need of an individual (or individuals) to fill those two positions. We would ask that anyone who is interested in serving in one or both of these positions please let the Board know as soon as possible so that we can quickly commence the transition process.

 

 

            We are just a few short weeks away from the annual Rotary All-Star Hockey Classic!  The players have been nominated and the process of putting the four teams together has already commenced.  Thank you to all of the Rotarians who have volunteered to work at this event and to provide food for our concession stand.  There are still opportunities to provide concessions, so if you haven’t done so already, please sign up to provide food, drinks or supplies to the concession stand.  Another way to help is to spread the word about the game!  The majority of the money we make from this event comes from the tickets we sell.  This year’s event will be held on Saturday, March 24^th at the Essex Skating Facility.  Please contact Jeff Cabanaw if you have any questions about this event or would like to help out.

 

 

            Thank you to all who have volunteered to cover shifts at the Food Shelf in January.  Presently, we have enough volunteers for the month of February.  We are, however, looking for volunteers for March (Monday, March 12^th and Thursday, March 22^nd).  Please let Sharon Dettenreider know if you are able to fill any of these slots.

 

Upcoming Meeting Schedule:  Wednesday, March 7, 2018 – Our speaker will be Fred Kenney, the local organizer for the Feed My Starving Children service project.

 

For the complete list of upcoming speakers and information about the Club, please go to our website at www.essexrotary.org   Be sure to also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EssexVermontRotary , on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/essexvermontrotary/ and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/essex_rotary

 

 

       Yours in Rotary,

 

Jason Ruwet