The View – 1/15/15

Next week: Bruce Lewis will cover Club member trivia. Come find out all you didn’t know about your fellow Rotarians!

Prez John Cottle opened our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thought for the Day: “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

Foundation report:

Cornelia gives a status report on our Mendocino Rotary Foundation.

Cornelia shared that there is a current hubbub as to whether Mendocino is called a Village or a Town… the contention is that the newbies to the area are imposing the word ‘Village’ onto the community. No matter the outcome of this debate, there is one thing that people seem to agree on, and that is the positive value of Rotary Park.

The consensus that Cornelia hears is that there is overwhelming support for our preservation of the open space that is now Rotary Park. Beyond that, there is little that is known by the general public… We will run a contest to determine the public’s will for the park’s future. The contest is intended as a way to engage the town so that 1) the community feels that it is their park, not solely Rotary’s park; and 2) to create a groundswell of support for our winning ideas so that the Historic Review Board will be poised to approve the plans.

Next week, the contest will be announced to local artists and school children. In March or April, there will be a public display of all the different depictions of the park. These will be the basis for discussion and selecting the contest winners. Benches? Gazebo? Paths? Trees? Uses? Signage? Electricity?

The intention is that our Rotary Club will run the park and help steward park events, while another organization will own it (eventually).

Happy Dollars:

• John C.: happy that Matt has stepped up to help with so many things lately, mostly Rotary Park related.
• Guenter: happy for his annual Christmas family reunion in Sedona, and for the after-reunion recovery in Palm Desert and the Grand Canyon. (Guenter shared 2 photos of the glass skywalk, looking straight down 4000 feet to the Colorado River.)
  

  Guenter, fully recovered from his family reunion!

• Ray: filled in at Gary’s poker night, and cleaned up!

Sunshine Report:
Jerry K. has not been well and is at MCDH, and may be heading down to UCSF. Joe is improving, and Wilma is too, and hopefully both are going to join us soon. John P will have elbow surgery next Wednesday.

Announcements:

Donna announces the Healthy Living with Chronic Conditions class available for free at MCDH.

• Donna announced that the “Living Well with Chronic Conditions” class is starting this Friday at 1:30, for 6 weeks at MCDH — it’s a great class, and she encourages anyone with a chronic condition to attend this free series.
• Donna will be delivering our gift dictionaries to third graders this Friday at 12:30 to the Comptche and Albion schools. She requests volunteers to accompany her. Heather and Ray volunteered; more are welcome, so if you’re interested, contact Donna!
• Annie Liner has resigned from Rotary, due to too many competing obligations, especially with the Childrens Fund.
• The new Club directory, version 1, has been emailed out as pdf. An updated version will be sent out soon, with color photos!
• AV hookups and troubleshooting for presentations during our meetings will be reviewed with several Rotary members, so that we can avoid the technical glitches we’ve had in the past.
• Charter Night will be Friday, Feb. 6, and Jody needs RSVPs quickly. Location: top floor of Hill House. A performer has been hired (you’ll have to show up to see who/what it is!). Start time: 6:00 p.m. And since Jody likes good times, and he’s planning this, it just might be the best Charter Night ever! Watch for emails with more details… $35/person.
• Prez John C. will be gone Jan. 20-28 in Mexico. Jody will run next week’s meeting.
• Kira announced that the golf tournament planning will begin…
• Our Career Guide that we began about 6 months ago is in need of further development if we are going to turn it into a useful booklet. Bruce announced that we will be soliciting a few paragraphs from each person, to develop this into a small booklet that can be distributed to high school students and anyone considering a career change.
  

  Bruce shared photos of other Rotary Park locations.

Today’s Program
Bruce showed photos of Rotary Park locations around the country, for example, in Tacoma, Lake Havasu and Ojai. Commemorative bricks were sold and the Rotary wheel appeared in some of the examples along with the Rotary motto.

Matt leads our Rotary Park brainstorming session.

Matt O’Halloran led a discussion about ideas for development of our Rotary Park.

John Porter wants a large sign saying it was Rotary Park. A redwood burl sign was suggested by Kira. Donna would like us to develop Nature elements, natural stones, walkways, large stones.

Ray would like to develop the word “community” in our presentation and/or in the name of the park to give ownership to the community.

Live web came for surveillance and security for 24 hour viewing was recommended.
PG&E on property would be good. What are our responsibilities?

John I. was involved in a park before in Pleasanton. They had a gazebo bandstand, cover, sound system, lights. Cons: homeless, skate board damage.

Donna visited a park in New York, where they had a gazebo along with Farmers Market.
John C. said architect Joe Odegard would do renderings of park, he has an engineer to look at water issues, and someone would donate redwood burl. Need carpentry and landscape help, maybe Gary Ratway?

The Park will need to be maintained; donations are out there to help with our visions.
We need to have a vision of what the USE of the park will be, then the design of the park will follow.

Sean was involved in Parks in Lakeport and Ukiah. Music in the park, weddings made money for the park. Charge money, pass the hat? We will need to be concerned with lighting if there are evening events. Maybe a dance floor

What about trash, restrooms? Tom said existing public restrooms will be remodeled on Main Street via donations to MAPA. Also, a sherriff’s substation is in the works.

Kathleen contributes to the conversation.

We need to be careful to not overbuild so the homeless don’t “camp out.”

Jerry (via an email to Prez Cottle) suggested having other service clubs host events, health day, mobile pet adoption, food bank drop off, farmers market.

Heather suggested outdoor movie nights.

Harold suggested we involve the Historical Review board early on to get their input. Matt suggested we have something in the paper each week to raise awareness regarding the park, and to do presentations to other service clubs.

John P. reminded us that we promised paving stones and that promise needs to be honored. Tom said that most likely a plaza would built with the stones (rather than a pathway) because of ADA requirements.

Tom shares information on paving stones.

Gary wants to see it set up for daily use, to have your lunch, read, relax and enjoy: include benches, picnic tables?

Matt asked us to be open to all ideas, perhaps hold another scoping meeting. There was general agreement with this idea.

Donna would like to know the Park’s latitude/longitude — maybe we could put a marker with this information?

How about a facebook page dedicated to the Park?

Ray asked if we can narrow our focus by defining anything we don’t want to have happen at the park. We agreed it should NOT be an off-leash park, and it should NOT be fenced.

We will need a dog waste station (with plastic pic-up bags) if we allow dogs.

We agreed to continue this discussion at another future meeting in a month or so. We will bring back today’s flipchart pages, and will have more information on the design contest at that time.

Raffle winners: Kira and Bruce — neither drew the joker!

Today’s productive meeting results!