Bulletins - 2006 - 07/19/2006
This
Week's Bulletin Was Written
By Sandra Schrift
President Carol Jensen called the meeting together at 7:35 am. Mel Gallegos provided the inspiring invocation and Joe Ciokin led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. We all looked swell – everyone dressed in their Rotary finest as advised by President Carol. Linda Jalving and Jim Mulvaney led us in a rousing interpretation of “California Here I Come.” President Carol wishes to convey the following message to everyone, "I would like to thank all of you for the warm welcome you have given me this month as I start my year as Rotary President. Your support and dedication to our club is the reason we are so successful and I am confident that together we will have another great year." We, too, are confident of a great year under your leadership.
Rosalie Kramm raffled a Big Goody Basket and two baskets of tomatoes (home grown). A membership to the University Club was another auction item – lucky winner of this $1500 value was Jim Mulvaney AND he only paid $700. Half the proceeds goes to our Club and the other half is for a scholarship recipient designated by The University Club.
We had 14 guests this week, including 4 law students, a member of the Rotary International Youth Orchestra, 2 Rotaracts, the California Secretary of State visiting from the Santa Cruz Rotary Club and a member from the Palm Springs Club.
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Report from Bobbi Spinner-Flack and Steve Espino on the “Stand Down” event last weekend which was well attended by the homeless veterans. This was the largest attended event in their 19 year history. Many Rotarians participated from our Club.
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Maureen Eberle introduced Sarah and Rotary member David Archambault and recognized their work for The Voices for Children. Dave is the new Board president for this organization. Our Club donated $1100.00 which represented the donations in lieu of speaker's gifts from this past year.
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Mel Gallegos and Maureen Eberle recognized 3 Paul Harris Fellows. Jim Mulvaney, Rob Berry and John D'Amore’s wife, Amaya. Maureen explained some of the projects that are funded by our Paul Harris donations.
Nancy Vaughan introduced our guest speaker, Ronne Froman, COO for the City of San Diego, who gave us an update on the city challenges. Ronne comes well prepared to tackle the City Hall “toads”. She compares her last incredible 7 months in this position to the Mr. Toad ride at Disneyland. The City Hall theme is REFORM. 
Ronnie explained that there are 38 issues to tackle. The top priority was handling the budget. A great deal of dysfunctionalism was apparent at City Hall upon the arrival of Mayor Sanders and Ronne. No organization prevailed. No leadership to bring the departments together. They lacked functional skills. Our IT system comes from the 1970’s. It took 4 months to get a list of who had contracts with the city. There was no accountability, e.g. no responsibility. The goal was to keep the status quo. Now they have a leadership team in place to restructure the organization and make it functional. Have 20 teams working daily to create efficiency, outsource many of the contracts, reduce 500 positions and save the city 45K. Objectives – to make San Diego a safe, clean city and financially responsible and sustainable. Ronne reminded us that “reform takes root when the leader is committed to the process . . . and Mayor Jerry is!” Our Vision – a return to “San Diego is America’s Finest City.” Ronne wanted club members to know that if they wish to receive weekly e-mail updates from the Mayor they could go to www.sandiego.gov and click on the Mayor's picture to register for the e-mail updates. Meeting ended at 8:33a.m. Next week's speaker will be Admiral Ed Martin. Have a great week.
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