Announcements and Reminders
Rotary Warrior night will be March 2nd. Find it on the internet by putting in Rotary Warriors Santa Cruz for tickets.
The speech (the club only) contest will be February 15th. Sign up to help with judging, scoring or greeting.
Wednesday Feb 21st will be the Business Showcase in Aptos. The event is held here at Aptos Seascape from 4-7. Doug has a volunteer sign-up sheet to help promote Rotary that night.
RYLA applications will go out later this month. Get them from Sandra if you know of students who are eligible (freshman, sophomores or juniors in high school).
The Rotaract club is holding its 2nd annual large scale fundraiser on February 24th which will support Jacobs Heart and Digital Nest. It will be from 12-4 at the UCSC arboretum. For more information or tickets go to rotaractfair.eventbrite.com. They also have individuals available for tasks around your house as another fundraiser.
Applications will be on the website for community grants by the end of January. April 13th will be date to turn in the applications.
Taylor spoke to us about happenings at Congressman Panetta’s office and what their actions have been this past year. He has been working on issues such as health care, immigration and preventing oil drilling off our coast.
John Fry was our speaker today. He has an MBA and a PhD and has a construction group CDN Crocker Frye. He has many years of community service and is currently developing Founder’s Markets neighborhood grocery stores. He has just completed a year of service on the grand jury and spoke to us about that today.
Mr. Fry is stressed that he is recruiting people for the civil grand jury. He explained what it does and its responsibilities.18 people are on it and it meets once a week. There are committees in addition such as audit and finance as well as the county and cities and criminal justice where they inspect the jails. Special districts is another committee. Health and human services and schools and libraries are also included. They have the right to subpoena people.
Many reports are generated. Google Santa Cruz County Grand Jury to see them. The agency being investigated must respond within 90 days. Some reports for 2016-2017 include county elections department, the Soquel School district and the Brown act, assessing the threat of violence in the public schools, jails in Santa Cruz county and the SC Metropolitan Transit District.
He went on to describe one case of the Pajaro Valley School District and Bond Measure L. It began as a parental question on what the $150 million was being spent on. The grand jury conducted research and interviews. They verified everything with triangulation (three independent sources of information) such as site visits and expert sources and then drafted a report on which all 18 people signed off.