President “Left” Carolyn opened the meeting promptly at the appointed time which was 20 minutes before Carl  arrived.

 

Alden was eloquent with his entreaties in prayer but forgot to pray for an early spring.

 

Steve led us in song.  Unfortunately it sounded like all our pipes were frozen.

 

There were no guests present so we went immediately to happy dollars. John Cuozzo was happy that 2 young relatives supported full funding of public education by participating in a rally at the statehouse.  Bob Shankman was happy to announce a few members will be visiting with Dewey Budd after today’s meeting.  Bob asked us all to join in singing Dewey’s favorite Rotary song—R O T A R Y.  Fortunately Dewey was not here to listen to our feeble attempt.  Tom Digby, along with the entire membership, thanked Jim Taylor for the great job he did with the pancake breakfast.  Tom also thanked Bob Walker for his assistance in washing the sticky forks.  Linda McConville and Denise Current were happy for the results from the bake sale.  Over $300 was raised with a lot of the credit going to Natalie and Juliana Hannum .  Who could say no to 2 cute young girls.  Bob Walker is happy his granddaughter is safely home from Haiti where there is so much civil disorder.  Jim Taylor is happy the pancake breakfast is over.  He wasn’t too happy about going to the Philadelphia Flower Show.

 

Kurt Walton paid a picture fine.  He was pictured celebrating the opening of Pass It Along new office location.

 

Jim gave a preliminary report on the financials for the pancake breakfast.  With some money still due, it looks like the net proceeds will exceed $2500.  He offered a number of suggestions for future pancake breakfasts.  1) Hold in February.   2) Pick a date and stick with it.  Having a snow date adds confusion.  3)  Very few “customers” arrive before 8 am so start breakfast at that time rather than 7 am.  4)  Maybe go to high grade plastic utensils.  Washing silverware is difficult and time consuming.

 

Jim introduced our guest speaker Sheriff Mike Strada.  Before Mike spoke, Jim thanked the Sheriff for all the assistance given by SLAP in painting our food booth.  The Sheriff spoke about the impact of the bail reform laws.  The intent of the law was to try to keep people out of jail.  This is reflected in the Sussex County Jail population.  In 2016 the average daily jail population was 147. Since the first of the year that count has gone down to 74.  In addition to the decrease in population, the jail which was constructed in the early ‘70’ needs major work not only in repairs but in bringing the building up to current codes.  Sheriff Strada is looking at alternatives in the way Sussex County is housing prisoners.  He gave 2 interesting statistics-------80% of those incarcerated are for drug offenses and 25% of the jail population is female.

 

The Garden Party will be held on June 29.  Denise has offered her home again as the venue.  In would be nice if someone else was able to be the host.

 

The winner of the 50/50 will go unnamed so to prevent Frank Eberhardt from asking for a monetary gift.