Marana Rotary Club Meeting Oct 20 2015

President Mary Straus opened today’s meeting by acknowledging our special guest Assistant Governor Jim Lamb, and by thanking the Service Above Self dinner committee for a wonderful event on Oct 9.

This week we held our MCAT Student of the Month award, which went to Sema Lerma-Hernandez, who was accompanied by her Mom Susan and Academic Coach Sandy Howard. Sandy told us that Sema was “one tough cookie” when she first joined MCAT. She just wanted to get her work done and get out. Sema explained that it took time for her to really start liking to come to school. Now she sees herself as an influence on sisters and nieces and other young people struggling with school. As Sandy says, Sema is an inspiration to other students.

 

Shown above: Sema (left) receiving her Student of the Month award from President Mary Straus.

 

 

 

Rotary Foundation Day includes a seminar at PCC from 9am to 3pm, and dinner at the Omni, reception at 6pm, dinner at 7.

 

Also 11/7 marks the end of the Edward Jones Bag-a-Thon food collection drive (Oct 1 – Nov 7) with Maeve Johnson’s annual Pancake Breakfast from 8 – 10:30am. You can help support the Marana Community Food Bank by dropping off food at the Edward Jones office at 3005 W Ina Road, Suite 101.

 

Nov. 7^th is a very popular day! The Tucson Walk to End Alzheimer’s begins at the UofA at 9:15am. You can join the team “Burning Daylight” organized by former President of Marana Rotary, Kim Holaway, and her husband Dave, who is currently fighting this disease. Register or donate at www.tucsonalzheimerswalk.org.

 

El Tour de Tucson day! Club members, along with Teacher of the Year Kathleen Neighbors’ Interact students from Tortolita Middle School, will be aiding riders at Tangerine Rd and I-10. Contact Tony Hunter to volunteer.

 

Did you know that the number of molecules in one mole of any substance is 6.02 x 10²³? Resident biochemist/molecular biophysicist Jo Holt shared this valuable information with us because Friday Oct. 23 is officially Mole Day. (October 23, 10-23. Get it?). Although quite a few Marana Rotarians did not know about Avogado’s number (Jim Lamb did, as did Alan Chestnut!), there were approximately 6.02 x 10²³ comments made about “moles.” Even extending to “mold.” Jo will continue to try to explain various scientific and mathematical constants to this group, regardless of the enormity of the challenge.

 

 

We had the pleasure of being visited by two experts on the Pima County Bond proposals that residents are currently voting on:  Nicole Fyffe, Executive Assistant to the County Supervisor (left), and Diane Durazo, Special Staff Assistant to the Supervisor (right). Along with some handouts summarizing the bond proposals, Nicole explained the basics of how the bond proposals came to be, and what they cover. There has been over 40 years of bonding in Pima county to fund infrastructure that supports businesses and residents. Over this time, 54 bonds have been approved and only 4 were not approved. Since 1997 there have been over 700 individual projects funded by bonds, which can be viewed with an interactive map on the County website (http://webcms.pima.gov/government/project_management_office_pmo/).

The Bond Advisory Committee has been working on this package of projects for Pima county since 2006 and held over 100 meetings to work through about $3Billion of requests. The Committee sent a $650Million package to the Board of Supervisors, who added road repair and construction projects for a final total of $815M which includes 99 projects or programs.

 

The current bond proposals involve in Marana flood control, library, parks, tourism, and conservation projects, as well as $9M for Marana roads.

 

Marana Rotary thanks Nicole and Diane for a very informative presentation on the Pima County bonds, and encourages everyone to vote (either yes or no) by or on Nov. 3.