Tag: community

Meeting Clipboard 12/5/24

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Minutes
Southern Rennselaer County Rotary Meeting
December 5, 2024


Attended by: Roberto Martinez, Phil Kellerman, Jim Lehayne, Kevin Lehayne, Dick Drumm, Pat Bailey, Peter Brown, Deb Brown, Ray Hannan, Andy Lehayne and Murray Forth. Dean and Doris Calamares attended by Zoom.


Roberto welcomed everyone. The pledge was conducted.


Nest week on the 12th the annual holiday party will be held at the home of Peter and Deb Brown.


Phil Kellerman introduced the guest speaker, Gretchen Zegger, co-president of Whiskers.


Whiskers, based in Albany, rescues cats and finds suitable homes for adoption.  The agency currently houses 122 cats and depends on 230 volunteers.  


A new state law will limit the number of cats to 12 for occupancy in any one room. Thus, Whiskers is embarking on a fund-raising campaign for a new building with larger space.  


Whiskers has been around for about 40 years. Many of the cats rescued have been abandoned.  Medical treatment is provided to cats when needed.


In 2024 Whiskers served 655 cats.


In regular business, Roberto thanked everyone for taking Rotary items that were brought out of storage. Pat asked everyone who took items to get her a list of what was taken for record-keeping.


Roberto announced that the global grant for funding to provide access to safe water by establishing a borehole at the Enabelibel Full Gospel Church in Narok County, Kenya had been approved. Roberto thanked Peter and everyone loudly applauded Peter’s efforts. Peter said that the next step is to arrange the hydro-geological survey to see if there is potable water.


Concerning membership, two members (Jennifer Felts and AJ Amato) have ended their participation, but the club is picking up two new members.


Pat said that she is working to schedule a defensive driving class in the spring.


The holiday party is scheduled for December 12 at the Browns. Kevin reviewed a chart with holiday gifts requested by the club’s “adopted” family to bring to the party for collection.


On December 19 our meeting will be held at Spinney and hosted by Ray and Phil. They are making arrangements for catered food and Phil will conduct a trivia contest.


There will be no meetings on December 25 and January 2nd. The next meeting will be January 9th.


Ron has a potential member, Laurie Pferr, who will be speaking in either January or February.


John Justino has agreed to speak on the transition of the SUNY Albany School of Public Health in February.


Carole Heaney will be conducting a Holiday Grief Conversation December 8th from 1-3pm at the Lyons Funeral Home.


Roberto mentioned several Rotary international conferences coming up.


Peter and Kevin addressed the intention for our club to hold a Cornhole Tournament to raise funds. While the casino in Schenectady would draw lots of competitors, Kevin thought that holding it at an East Greenbush school would be more family friendly. Discussions are ongoing with the East Greenbush school board.


Phil said that he wanted to communicate with representatives at the East Greenbush Methodist Church about holding a benefit charity concert in the spring with a band from Florida and the Albany-based band “Enjoyous.”

Meeting Clipboard 11/7/24

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Minutes
Southern Rennselaer County Rotary Meeting
November 7, 2024


Attended by: Roberto Martinez, Phil Kellerman, Carole Heaney, Jim Leyhane, Kevin Leyhane, Dick Drumm, Pat Bailey, Peter Brown, Deb Brown, Ray Hannan, Chris Bystroff, and Andy Leyhane. Ruth Russell joined in via Zoom.


Next week’s speaker will be Lisa Jackson from the Rotary Club in Schenectady.


Roberto welcomed everyone. The pledge was conducted.


Speaker Bob Connor was introduced by Phil Kellerman. Bob spoke about the history of Juneteenth. Bob specifically talked about General Gordon Granger as the man behind Juneteenth and James Montgomery, abolitionist warrior, as major contributors to advocating for the recognition that blacks solders made to the Union effort and the freeing of slaves, resulting in the Juneteenth holiday.


Bob was kind of enough to offer the sale of three of his books and proceeds were donated to our water project. $152 was raised via the sales.


In regular business, Roberto mentioned that Murray was moving Rotary memorabilia and other items out of storage. These items were previously on display at Quigley’s restaurant where we used to meet.


Concerning our Rotary water project, Peter reported the good news that a bank account had been established in Kenya. The next step is payment for the hydro geological survey.


Phil provided a tax status update by saying he had submitted to the IRS the application for reinstatement of 501c4 status and the financial filings for the past 4 years. He credited Terry for doing the bulk of the work. 


A speaker has been selected for December 5th. Phil said that he is seeking a speaker for December 19. However, a live meeting will not be able to be held at Moscatiellos since they will be booked during the holidays. A decision will be made as to how to meet that day.


Roberto said that a CNY Rotary member orientation was held October 22nd. Carole said that she learned a tremendous amount as she attended the P1 part as she is a relatively new member. Jim took P2 and Roberto took the graduate part.  


It was announced that the Scotia Rotary Club was making available washable menstrual kits to be distributed to girls all over the world who do not have access to menstrual products.  


Club members decided to once again adopt a family for the holidays via Circles of Mercy. Roberto said that we needed a leader to spearhead our efforts to collect holiday gifts for the adopted family.


The Shelter Box annual event is to be held November 14 at 8 pm EST at ShelterBoxUSA.org/virtual.


Roberto said that the Rotary Foundation is embarking on a large fundraising campaign to build the endowment to over 2 billion dollars to enable the Foundation to issue district grants.  


CYN is sponsoring a youth exchange at the CYN Rotary Conference in Albany, April 4-6, 2025. They are looking for a donation of $500 from each club in the district, and want a response by the end of November.


Information on CYN events can be found at http://www.cynrotary.org.


The Legacy Brunch will be held on Sunday, November 17th at the Doubletree in Binghamton, New York.


The Rotary Presidential Peace Conference will be held February 20-22, 2025 in Istanbul.


The Rotary International Convention will be held in Calgary June 21-25, 2005. It will be in Minneapolis in 2028 and in Chicago in 2030.


In other business, Deb Brown said the she and Peter will host the holiday party on December 12 at their house. Arrangements are being made to order food from La Bella in Valatie. A sign up sheet will be handed out at next week’s meeting.


Pat said she is interested in helping to organize a defensive driving course at the Nassau free library.  


Jim announced that he still has soap to sell to raise funds for the club.


Roberto mentioned that Hoffman’s Car Wash may have tickets for car washes that we can sell to raise money. He will talk to Murray about this.