Rotarians walked into the Michigan Room at LCC with the welcoming sounds of mid-century modern jazz courtesy of Steve Robinson’s on-site mixing skills. The next surprise for the day was the meeting being called to order by Past President Chris Holman who was filling in for President Rebecca. Rotarians recited the 4-Way Test and Julie Pingston provided the reflection which recognized Monday’s national observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the presidential inauguration taking place on the same day. Against that backdrop, she shared moving and timely excerpts from the poem “From the Hill We Climb” which was written by Amanda Gorman and recited at the last inauguration to focus on differences amongst us. Hari Kern led Rotarians in singing America the Beautiful. We were able to welcome special guests to the meeting as Chris Holman introduced Andy Zarkovich from Providence Consulting and Kate Snyder from Piper & Gold who is applying for membership. Carrie Hindmon introduced herself as a visiting Rotarian from the Haslett/Okemos Club but transferring soon to the Lansing Club and she works with Mark Hooper at Andrews, Hopper Pavlik, PLC; and, Scott Watkins introduced Shay Manawar from the Lansing Economic Development Corporation. Past President Chris updated that the Health of the Club is good and introduced our long time “red badge” member Dr. Steve Robinson to provide his new member presentation and receive his  blue badge. Steve described his life interests as a Venn diagram including family, work and “Steve’s stuff”. He shared family photos and stories of his parents and grandparents; wife Kathy who studied HR and Labor Relations at MSU; son Owen who received his bachelor’s degree in music from MSU and is now studying Classical Saxophone and Jazz Studies at Florida State University; and, his daughter Julia who graduated from Miami of Ohio and is looking to attend law school, hopefully at the University of Michigan. Steve graduated from MSU and worked at Elderly Instruments and as a faculty intern at LCC. He currently has his dream job as President of Lansing Community College after working at Mott Community College and leading Owens Community College in Toledo. He lives right on LCC’s campus in the college’s Hermann House. His passion is all things music…and his 1972 Porshe 914 which is a combo Porsche and Volkswagen but more Volkswagen that Porsche! Past President Chris announced that the Membership Committee will NOT meet today and will meet on January 24. Chair of the Month and Chair of the Day Nathan Triplett recognized CATA and Rotary connections with former CEO Sandy Draggoo and former Board Chair Pat Munshaw. As CATA’s Board Chair, Nathan introduced our speaker Andrew Brieschke, Deputy CEO at CATA. Andrew has been with CATA for 17 years and his responsibilities have evolved over the years and he now oversees Operations, Maintenance & Facilities and CATA’s contract for service with MSU. CATA’s Board is comprised of representatives from Lansing, East Lansing, Lansing, Delhi Township and Meridian Townships, Ingham County, MSU, and a non-voting member from EATRAN. There are 32 fixed routes CATA manages including 9 routes on MSU’s campus. They also offer robust Paratransit Services through SPECTRAN, the Shopping Bus, Redi-Ride and others. CATA has a workforce of 390 individuals from administration, full-time and part-time drivers and mechanics. Their fleet is always expanding and they have 105 fixed route buses with 50% being electric buses, 34 small cutaway buses, 8 electric vehicles, and 46 support vehicles. They continue to transition to electric vehicles, however the process is slow with a new bus taking 16-18 months to arrive with only two companies that manufacture. CATA has its own maintenance training and offers on-site training to the CATA team as well as other transit agencies throughout the State. CATA maintains 1600 bus stops with 152 of them having shelters. The facilities CATA maintains are throughout the community and focus on the headquarters on Tranter Street which is 212,000 square feet with 175,000 square feet for bus storage to keep the bus fleet under a roof. Andrew highlighted CATA’s plans for a new building at 511 S. Washington, the former Greyhound Station in downtown Lansing. The building will be a meeting space and house the customer facing employees to be accessible to meet their needs. New advancements for CATA include mobile ticketing, contactless payment, cameras and connectivity to the emergency response system in the state. They also continue to expand routes including the Route 3 Extension. This route stopped at the Lansing Mall previously and now goes to the Delta Marketplace resulting in a 45% increase in riders on the weekends. There are also new connectors to Grand Ledge and Charlotte. The CATA Rydz is a new micro transit service that provides first and last legs for riders to be able to extend their rides in downtown Lansing, Delta Township and MSU to their destination. Ridership continues to rise following the pandemic. Fixed-Route Ridership in 2024 was almost 8.5 million rides which is a 21% increase relative to 2020 and 15% relative to 2023. Paratransit ridership in 2024 was 380,000 rides which is a 15% increase relative to 2020 and 17% relative to 2023. During the Q/A, Judi Harris from the American Red Cross Mid-Michigan applauded CATA for their presence at emergencies within the community to provide a warm shelter for this amidst and emergency and she’s never the one to call them. They just show up when needed. Thanks to Andrew for the informative presentation and thanks to CATA for their strong community support in ways that we never knew about until today. Our next meeting will be Friday, January 25 at LCC and our speaker is Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement with the Michigan Supreme Court. See you there! Email for Julie Pingston: jpingston@lansing.org Thank YOU Julie, she took this "job" along with giving the Reflection last Friday. |