February 17th minutes
Meeting Minutes for February 17th
Todd Murchison stood in as president today for Ali who just had knee surgery and welcomes all friendly texts. Todd offered us these quotes. “When an individual, a sect, a clique or a nation hates and despises another individual, sect, clique or nation, inevitably they simply do not actually know the objects of their hatred. Ignorance is always at the bottom of it.” Paul Harris (founder of Rotary) ; and also “Always remember you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” Margaret Mead
Thanks to our greeters – Bethany and Turner Bob Fagelson volunteered for next week.
Jen filled in as scribe for Ross. 2/24 Jerry; 3/2 Scott will need a fill in; 3/9 Diane
Guests: Kevin introduced his daugher Sarah
Bethany was our student Rotarian, but only reported that they’re on school break.
Announcements:
Sandy: Thursday, March 10th 5:30-7:30pm the noon club is having a mixer at the Brattleboro Country Club. Let’s try to get more than just 4 of us to join them this time.
Toni is ordering Rotary shirts. She’ll send out an e-mail to see who needs one, but you must reply to get one. There will be an opportunity to purchase other Rotary-wear for warmer weather needs at a later date.
Tristam has coffee for sale again.
KJ and Sandy are going to the noon club to run a couple rounds of trivia as a promo. They need a score-keeper. Beathany volunteered.
Jen will e-mail out assignments for overflow shelter dinner this Friday 2/19 from 5-7. Still need a server. Dan volunteered.
Kevin reminded us of the 3 on 3 on March 12th. The set up people will get in Friday afternoon for about an hour, hopefully at 4pm, but depending on high school sports. The registration deadline is three weeks away. The deadline is Wednesday this year, which is earlier than in the past, to eliminate last minute scrambling with the brackets. Bob was curious if it will affect numbers. Pepsi’s on board with drinks. Kevin will have them co-ordinate with Dan for a pick up of fewer sodas and more water and sports drinks this year.
Sarah Yaeger let us know about a school community service project for VT Tech. A sock drive for Groundworks Collaborative collecting socks, personal care and feminine hygiene products. Drop them off at Vermont Tech or with Kevin at Rotary. Kevin is offering a 40 sock challenge (I assume that’s forty pairs…..)
Birthdays: Dan Deitz this Saturday 2/20
Cards: 4 of hearts – no winner
Brags:
Jill bragged for Mesa wearing her United Way onesie who just graduated from her infant car seat to her convertible car seat.
Kevin bragged for an amazing trip to Jamaica at an all-inclusive resort in Montego Bay. His new favorite drink is the dirty banana, a chocolate coffee mikshake with a run kick. Wonderful staff, friendly guests. They met a couple from South Dakota, the husband used to ride through Brattleboro on deliveries to C&S wholesale. He also bragged for his daughter who house sat for them and who had two dirty bananas waiting for them when they arrived home.
Speaker: Drew from Rescue Inc.
Rescue Inc serves 15 communinites and has since 1966. They celebrate 50 years this year. They’ve been paramedics since the 1970’s. They take care of the area’s EMS training. They were the first ambulances with full scope critical care transport, which has invasive monitoring and allows for critical care transport to Dartmouth, Boston and more. They have 46 members that go ANYWHERE. They do CPR, AED and advanced training.
On-site advanced level care is your best chance of survival in an emergency, rather than transporting to a hospital, but life-saving equipment is expensive and disposable. But they only get reimbursed by medicaid for transport and that reimbursement is .13 cents on the dollar. Transportation is much different that advanced treatment and they are not allowed to bill patients for treatment, so they have to pay for it. Each time they administer heroine over-dose drugs it costs them $60. In the last year, the state has gone from 18% of its population on Medicaid to 35%. This increase has created a huge gap in projected budget shortfalls for the year. There is also a 10 to 20 % increase in mental health and drug related call volume, due to suicides and overdoses.
Drew is working hard to lobby the state government to change it’s health care billing structure. The federal government reduced it’s rate by ½% on January 1st, but the state hasn’t changed it’s rates since 2008. Medicaid is 45% state funded and 55% federally funded, which means when the state falls short of increasing its funds to Rescue Inc. it leaves 3 million dollars of matching grant funds on the table uncollected. They need to replace their stretchers this year or they can’t get new ambulances because the code on the new ambulances is different and won’t allow for the old stretchers. Eventually these costs may fall back on the property owners. But they try to fundraise as much as possible. Their ADVENTURE RACE is set for October 15th. Those who were here saw awesome photos of Josh and Toni suspended from harnesses at last year’s race!