Charlotte-Shelburne Rotary - Newsletter

John’s Rotary thought concentrated on the double triple match program for the Rotary Foundation and he once again reminded everyone that this is still available.

Announcements

John announced that next week is committee meetings and the following day is the Thursday Board meeting. The meeting on the 23rd will be a Christmas celebration and there will not be a meeting on the 30th. John plans to tell William this time.

A card was being passed around for Lyse Emond Past District Governor who was recently taken to the hospital. Members were encouraged to put their well wishes on the card.

We got a thank you letter from Shelburne Players for advertising in their program.

Sergeant at Arms

Kris Engstrom substituted for the absent Don Condon with a little bit of help from Ric Flood and fined everyone who wasn’t wearing a pin which included Terry Kennaugh, Linda Schiavone and Joyce Errecart. Kris’s truck joke went over fairly well but Don is sorely missed.

Happy fines:

John Biel for making a reservation at Jackson Hole -- also fined for thinking he was going to cancel the meeting today due to a little snow
Bill Root for going to work for People’s Security with the Chittenden Bank in Gary’s office
Jim Spad for finding that Bill Root was employed, and happy about the student that is staying with him
Terrill because she will be babysitting her granddaughter next week
John Hammer was obviously happy for snow
Gary Bergeron happy that Bill joined the Bank
Terry Kennaugh for a good trip to Kennebunkport
Bob Maynes happy that Bill was with Gary instead of TD Bank
Sam Feitelberg was happy that they had a good meeting on Honduras
Ric was happy that everything went well with Megan’s surgery and her move
George was just happy

Make ups: George and Linda Schivone did two make ups. Steve and Elaine Dates did two make ups.

Lucky draw: John Biel had the lucky ticket but was unable to draw the joker.

Guest Speaker

Senator Doug Racine, President John Beal and Program Co-chair Michael Lash

Michael Lash introduced Senator Doug Racine. Doug was born in Burlington, graduated from Princeton and worked for Senator Leahy in D. C. He was elected to the state senate in 1982 and served five terms. He was Lieutenant Governor from 1997 to 2002 and lost the race for Governor in 2002. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2007 and chairs the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and is a member of the Senate Economic Development and Housing Committee. He is co-owner and vice-president of Willie Racine Jeep.

Senator Racine talked about 20 years in public office and said he was proud of organizations like Rotary, based on service to the community. His topic for our meeting was the state of the state that we are in. He said there are some hopeful signs ahead but it is still going to be a jobless recovery.

He thinks we as a nation and a state are living way beyond our means. We are borrowing and putting the burden on future generations. An example of this was President Obama committing 30,000 troops without a word about how it is going to be paid for. It costs a million dollars per year per soldier and that is coming out of our pockets.

He said businesses tend to be realistic about future costs and income, and government doesn’t seem to do that to the degree that they should.

He said health care is bankrupting us in the US and we have got to change it. He said Vermont does a better job than the nation. He said the unemployment trust fund is underfunded, the retirement fund is underfunded. He did point out Catamount Health Plan did get 15,000 new people insured for health insurance but the costs were all passed on to someone else. On the whole health care issue everyone agrees that everyone ought to have access, but how do you pay for it?

He said that we have some of the best health care in the world but it is some of the most expensive. He pointed out that conditions like obesity are driving a lot of the health care costs as well as the cost of technology. A recent study pointed out that 30% of all health care costs are wasteful and the biggest chunk was administrative. The rules and regulations for health care administration are very difficult for doctor’s offices to follow across the country because they are so many different levels of coverage. There is a lot of over-testing going on and it is amazing the variation by state for individual health care cost.

The overall theme of his message was that right now we have got to tighten our belts and stay ahead of the curve and cut costs and raise additional tax revenue. He suggested one idea might be like Governor Snelling did a temporary income tax increase that was promised to be pulled back as soon as we were out of the woods.