When you attend our Friday club meeting, please take a few seconds to "check in" with the person (usually Bob Corwin) who is keeping track of attendance.  If you are a new member Bob may not know your name, so it is helpful to give it to him to avoid any misidentification.  Keeping track of our attendance is important for a variety of reasons and it only takes a few seconds to ensure we record you as present.  Thank you for your help!

On the last day of November with the sun making a rare appearance this month, President Fliehman rang the Rotary bell to begin this week’s meeting. Teresa Kmetz gave our invocation and the club sang “My Country Tis of Thee”.

 

Steve Slocum roved with the microphone so Rotarians could introduce their many guests, including one visitor who just put in his membership application (the free lunch is about to end for you), as well as, a Rotarian’s mother (celebrating her birthday) and another club member’s daughter, who is also a prospective member (I guess mom wants to put an end to your free lunch program). As we will learn later prospective members was the unofficial theme of today’s meeting.

 

Melody Warzecha announced November birthday’s and lamented the question of the month – favorite thanksgiving food (as a November Rotarian, I must admit there was not going to be a lot of laughs with the answers). Turkey was the runaway winner from our November Rotarians. The November birthday club raised $1,100 for our club, good job group.

 

President Fliehman took back over and welcomed Lesa Smith to the podium. Lesa announced the club will be hosting alumni and current member of the Lansing Chamber of Commerce’s “Ten over the next Ten” award winners on January 18th to celebrate this achievement and I suspect a recruiting opportunity for our club to sign on some new prestigious members to Lansing Rotary. Since these recipients are only eligible for this honor before they reach age 35, it also appears to be an opportunity to change our age demographic based upon the recent Rotary Club survey we received via email. I used to help the age demographic cause, but alas no more, so let’s put on a good face and welcome the opportunity to add some new “blood” or as Justin Sheehan put it “fresh meat” into our club.

 

President Fliehman also reminded us that our 95th annual children’s Christmas Party is next week and encouraged us to invite friends and family to join us for this unique celebration (as long as you pick up their lunch tab).

 

This week we did not have special music as our scheduled singer came down with laryngitis, which is obviously a problem for someone asked to sing to such an esteemed group as ours. My table mate, Kevin Schumacher commented he wished I had laryngitis during our patriotic song earlier in our meeting.

 

With that President Fliehman asked Justin Sheehan to introduce our guest speaker Andi Crawford, the Director of the Department of Neighborhoods & Citizen Engagement for the City of Lansing (she must have huge business cards for that title). Andi noted that she loves Lansing returning in 2014 after a stint in South Florida.

Andi’s presentation centered around three pillars of her departments mission. Engaging citizens, advancing people and building neighborhoods. In engaging citizens her department oversees a number of initiatives, such as citizen academies with the most popular and obvious being the citizens police academy. They also offer opportunities to participate in their city services academy, which runs 10 weeks and explore other less popular city services. For example, citizens participating in this academy get to spend a day exploring our cities sewer system to enjoy the sites and potpourri (I spell check this to be safe) of smells this important city service has to offer. Less odorous initiatives include holding housing and neighborhood resource summits to learn about city services from the leaders of these areas. Also, walking Wednesdays is an opportunity for neighborhoods to invite city representatives out to walk in neighborhoods and talk to residents and even fix problems on the spot as they walk around areas of the city. Another exciting activity is “Drain Day” where city representatives go into the community in early November to emphasis the importance of cleaning up leaves to avoid plug drains that bring the inevitable flooding upon the spring thaw. The department also ventures into the community to get input on the annual budget process with the most popular of these meetings being held at a local bar and dubbed “Beer and Budgets”.

 

In advancing people in the community Andi discussed initiatives to move citizens who are in crisis situations from managing their crisis to climb the ladder to success after the crisis is managed. Her department heads up the Love Lansing event held in May each year with city leaders meeting with citizens throughout the city for the month. For more information on Andi’s department and events happening throughout Lansing sign up for the departments Lansing Neighborhoods weekly newsletter or visit www.lansingneighborhoods.info.

 

Finally, in building neighborhoods the city budgets approximately $60,000 for and offers individual neighborhood grants of up to $5,000 for neighborhood projects and improvements. Also, the city has a neighborhoods of focus program, which directs resources to very small areas in the city for betterment and local projects, such as community soccer fields that offer pickup games all are welcome to participate or just come out and watch the action on the field.

 

Andi closed by emphasizing that Lansing leaders are assessable and willing to listen, because the best part of Lansing is we live in a big small town or a small big town depending on how you look at it, but this is what makes it a great place to live.

 

After questions from the club, President Fliehman brought the meeting to a close until our annual children’s Christmas Party next week at the Lansing Center.

 

Tim Adam's email is:  TAdams@manercpa.com