Our meeting last week was a Club Assembly. The location was at the Senate Coney Island on Haggerty because the Senior Center was closed due to extremely frigid winter temperatures. The meeting was led by President-Elect Nancy Darga since our President, Dave Stechholz, was on vacation.
There were two important items on the agenda; voting on accepting a new member, Tom Martin, and voting on going forward with an endorsement, by our club, to challenge the nominating committee’s selection for District Governor, Scott Collier, to serve in 2027-2028. There was much discussion at our last Board Meeting and at today’s meeting, as to the history of challenging a committee’s selection, what it means to challenge and why someone may feel it necessary to challenge the committee’s selection. In this case, several club members felt that another candidate should have been nominated. That candidate is Therese Maggioncalda. The process of challenging requires that there are a total of ten Rotary Clubs that challenge the committee’s current selection. When that occurs, there will be a revote to redetermine the choice between Scott and Therese. A vote of our members was taken and resulted in 7 people in agreement to challenge and 4 people against. Therefore, Secretary Victoria Haltom signed and dated the letter that was drafted by District Governor Nick Krayacich, which endorses challenging the committee’s selection of Scott Collier for District Governor. Assistant District Governor Erin Dobbins emailed the letter to Nick at today’s meeting in compliance with meeting the required due date of January 24, 2025.
Tom Martin, retired and a former member of the Rotary Noon Cub, having met the qualifications for membership, received a unanimous vote to be a new Livonia AM Rotary Club member. Congratulations Tom!
Bill Friske presented a grant request by the Livonia Civic Ballet, requesting a grant in the amount of $1,500. Our club has regularly supported this organization in the past. Discussion was on what the ballet company intended to use the grant funds for and it was decided by a unanimous vote to grant them $750. This vote opened up a discussion about how to handle the criteria and process for allocating grants in the future. Concern was expressed about our club’s financial health, how to get beneficial feedback from grantees as to how they used the grant, how to enhance Rotary’s community connection through grant giving, and how to increase the support of Rotary can provide to those in our community who need assistance, not just through money but in other ways.
Further discussion resulted in these suggestions and ideas:
Nancy Darga suggested that our club create testimonial videos that can be placed on our website.
Bill Friske said he encourages grantees to submit a brief memo and pictures of how they used their grant money.
Victoria Haltom stated that members include Rotary events on their personal social media pages to show the diversity of our club’s projects.
Dawn Magretta stated that she would share the template used for grant applicants at Schoolcraft College.
Tammy Bonifield and Nancy intend to create a detailed accounting of what, where, and how our club’s income and expenditures are obtained and used.
Bob Carris, Pat Zucal, and Tammy are expecting to go to the bank to investigate putting a reserve amount of the club’s money into a Money Market account.
The food was good, the atmosphere was warm and cozy, and the ideas were flowing -making it a wonderful gathering and productive meeting.
Victoria Haltom
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