On a beautiful summer day Karan Bates-Gasior started the meeting at 12:16 p.m.  Yours truly led us in the Pledge, followed by our “guest” Kevin Kelly leading us in “The Four-Way Test.” They must not be as good with “The Four-Way Test” in Northville, as he seemed a little bit rusty! We had a beautiful blessing given by Tom Davies. We were then treated to lunch that included sausage, corn casserole, potato salad, garlic bread, salad, and cake.

 

 

 

 

Karan asked for any issues that you would like to have brought up to the club board, please have them in by tomorrow so she can set up the agenda for the meeting on Tuesday.

 

 

Scott Chabot handled the guests and visitors today. We had our speaker, Bill Sowerby. Patricia Shall, Austin Negipe, Ken Heger, and Dale McNabb.

 

 

We had a big 0 for birthdays, anniversaries, and club anniversaries so Mashell Carissimi had a lot of flowers to sell, but this proved no problem for the amazing Mount Clemens Rotary Club!

 

Steve Krankota started us off buying a flower for Gary “piano man” Felts because he thought Gary’s last name was Piano Man!

 

Gary (now that everyone knows his last name) bought a flower for Bill Patterson for being gone so long.

 

Paul Woodring bought a flower for Ray Glime who has also been missed for a few meetings.

 

Our guest Patricia Shall bought a flower for Mashell.

 

Ken Steele bought a flower for Julie Miller who is back after recovering from surgery.

 

Julie Miller bought a flower for Ellen Lysik.

 

I bought a flower for Karan for my part in her mad pre-meeting scramble to get people on all the jobs for the meeting.

 

 

Bill Patterson was on duty for music and did a great job leading! We sang “God Bless America” and “R-O-T-A-R-Y.”

 

 

Karan announced that Julie Miller is back after recovering from surgery. Great to have you back Julie!

 

 

 

 

Tom Davies was handing out fines today!

Steve Krankota was fined $2 for a few errors in the bulletin. Hopefully this week is better, but I’d cut him some slack!

Kevin Kelly was fined $2 for not being on the guest list. Not sure the rules on fining guests but he doesn’t really count as a guest, so that’s legit!

Ray Glime was fined for being one of the most missed Rotarians but also for his part in helping Kevin skip the guest list line.

Ken Steele got a fine for taking care of Julie during her recovery  . . .  tough crowd!

 

Ellen was fined for making an announcement that didn’t involve Rotary.

Val went on a boat trip and was fined $4 for being on a 42-foot yacht.

Bill Patterson got fined for holding up an entire cruise ship (for up to an hour by some accounts.)

Glenn Burton was fined for his interesting combination of sport coat, shoes, shorts outfit.

Larry was fined for not having a service person certification for doing some therapy on the beach for his dog by repeatedly tossing the ball into the lake!

 

 

Our speaker today was Michigan State Rep. Bill Sowerby.

 

He is the representative for District 31 which includes Mount Clemens, Fraser, and Clinton Township.

 

He is currently serving in his second term. He is on multiple committees including the education policy committee for grades K-12, the local government and finance committee, and is the vice chair for the outdoor recreation committee.

Some of the hot topics in Lansing are mostly related to the budget:

 

Roads:

 

Proposed gas tax of 45 cents/gallon

This would be for bridges, road structure improvement, bridges but also would possibly go to some other areas as well.

This is a $2.5 billion dollar issue that we need to find a way to solve

 

K-12 public education:

 

Proposed increase in funding to $120/pupil. MI is near the bottom tier of 50 states in both funding/student and tests scores. By comparison the Massachusetts model gives $1500 / student.
Rep. Sowerby has proposed introduction of mandatory Kindergarten for all students
Would not add much to the budget because programs are in place. Starting this year third grade students need to pass a reading test to move on to fourth grade.

 

Proposed decrease of $36 million in the mass transit budget. Low income, disabled, and elderly use mass transit to get around. Would take away local bus services. Long haul bus services would also be affected.

 

Some other issues:

 

State government officials do not currently have to let the public know how they earn money.

 

Only one of two states (Utah) that has this in place.

 

People should know how policies are affected by other businesses, etc. that officials are part of.

 

Rep. Sowerby has proposed a bill to create financial disclosure for elected officials.
Freedom of Information Act

 

If you need information about government you can fill out a form and the government has to provide it. Should have transparency - it has passed the house but has not been accepted by the senate.

 

Payday advance lenders:

Currently charge interest rates of up to 360 percent of the loans that have to be paid back in 30 days.

 

Bill proposed to cap the rate at 36 percent which is similar to other states’ policies and to the military.