Week one of the “signing” challenge is in the books as club members sang (sort of) “Make Marana Rotary Proud of You” — a catchy, and admittedly a bit hokey, jingle to promote club spirit.
Meeting minutes for July 16, 2024 Marana Rotary meeting
Club President Andrea De La Cruz called the meeting to order at 7:05 a.m.
Andrea announced that going forward we will keep first and third Tuesday meeting as hybrid/in-person. We will figure out another time that more convenient for members during the month to volunteer at the Marana Food Bank.
Announcements:
- The District 5500 Conference is Oct. 18-19. Do we want to table at the conference? The reason would be to promote the club. Last year, Cindy was able to cover both tables — ours and the Rotary Youth Exchange table because they were adjacent. Andrea and Cindy will be at the District Conference to staff our club table. Laura said she will try to be available for part of the day on Friday as well.
- SaddleBrooke Club’s “Build a House in a Day” project is generating a lot of interest – Andrea and her husband, Christian, and Dan and Heather, Bob and Linda are all likely to participate. The club board forwarded a funding recommendation to the Marana Foundation, which approved donating $1500 to the SaddleBrooke project. The international project will be Oct. 25-27.
- John offered to donate $25/week for 4 weeks to the Marana Rotary Foundation, and Bob said he will match it, if the club sings the song, “Make Marana Rotary Proud of You.” Club members in attendance (after John reminded us the tune and Andrea shared the lyrics) sang heartily. Week one is done!
- Bob is looking for speakers. Please give him names and contact information.
- John announced that he is looking into credit card charges we incur because we might find a less expensive alternative. John is looking in to options, i.e. Paypal. Tour de Cookie uses SwipeSimple, and the account is currently on hiatus until we start accepting registrations. Zelle and Venmo are also options, and Andrea will look into both of those online pay services as well.
Happy Bucks:
- Harold: happy able to join, been trying to get better for the last 3 weeks.
- Don: had great week in New York visiting family and attended preschool graduation
- Bob: grandkids enjoying above-ground pool.
- Mark: happy about the catchy tune in his head for the last 15 minutes and getting projects at home and getting the school campuses ready for the school year.
- Beckie: survived the storm and received 1 inch of water.
- Andrea: over the weekend, her brother-in-law had triplets
- John: happy for so many things that we don’t have time to hear all of them
- Cindy: just returned from multi-district conference for Rotary Youth Exchange and is in the midst of processing all the amazing information.
- Dan: spent four hours cleaning the yard, but all for nothing because of the big storm over the weekend. He also said it has been a nice transition to half-time work for MUSD while he trains the district’s new CFO> He also joked that it means, “half time, half pay, and full stress.”
Town of Marana Community Update
From her position as assistant to the town manage, Andrea provided the club a brief community update on the “goings on” in the Town of Marana.
Here are the highlights:
- The town’s FY 2025 budget of $473million was approved. The town employs 475.6 FTEs.
- Planning for the future updates: Transportation Master Plan (nearly ready for public comment); Water conservation plan (recently approved); facilities master plan (running out of room in current facilities, remodel current facilities?) and tourism master plan (tourism marketing manager in process of identifying what makes Marana unique).
- Future traffic concerns include the Cortaro Farms and I-10 and Tangerine and I-10 interchanges.
- Commercial ventures: Dairy Queen and Panda Express are going in north Marana; a Fry’s grocery store in Gladden Farms area (est. opening Sept.).
- Follow the status of these projects through the Marana Development Projects and Activity Dashboard.
- Marana Community and Aquatics Center is going up and features an art installation that reflects on the history of Marana.
- Residents can use the Marana Community Capital Improvement Projects Dashboard to track the different projects, such as the airport, transportation, parks and rec, and water and wastewater plans.
- Lots of the projects are “impact fee” funded, some are paid for with general funds, and some with the sales tax for the parks and rec projects.
- Finally, Andrea encouraged folks to tune to the “Real Talk With the Town” podcast. Send in questions and they will be answered.
The meeting adjourned with the “Four-Way Test.”
— Submitted by Laura Clymer, club publicity chair