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.