Pledge: Jodi de Smidt
Thought for the Day: Bob Binn
Lincoln stated if you are going to spend 6 hours cutting down a tree, you should spend 4 hours sharpening the axe. Good leadership is to get people to believe in you. Great leadership is to get people to believe in themselves. Our work with scholarships is getting them prepared and inspiring them to achieve higher and greater things.
Angel Riley read us the “news”, including:
If we are here to help others, then what are the others here for?
Sunshine Report: John deRussy
Bo Whitehill twisted his ankle.
Visiting Rotarians: Tom Stucker
Noemi K. Avram, Foster City
Nancy Bush, Burlingame
Mike Heffernan, Burlingame
Marilyn Orr, Burlingame
Guests:
Of Larry Patterson, Ross Moilan
Of Tom Huening, Coleen Leong
Announcements:
3:30 today, unveiling of Rotary Plaque and Resident Reception at Floritas
Dick Bennett:
A no-fee wine and appetizers mixer with San Mateo Chamber of Commerce, June 14 5:30. A no-host dinner to follow at Qube Restaurant.
Nick Rogers:
Thanked the pit crew: Phil Raiser, Jeff Lowenstein, Dick and Shawn DeLuna.
There were over 50 cars, and over 60 sponsors. Thank you to Sheila Canzian for securing the spot and Margaret Taylor and John Root for getting some students recipients to attend. It raised $20,600 for scholarships!
Thank you PR Ambassadors:
Don Shoecraft for training Spinnings’ editors on new website.
Anne LeClair for the story in San Mateo Patch about our scholars!
Rotary Community Grants:
Rachel Del Monte presented a check for $4,400 to NAMI. Board Chair, Jerry Thompson and executive director, Helene Zimmerman received the check. NAMI provides critical support for families with mental health issues.
Warriors Philanthropists:
Steve Way, Fishing Trip to Baja
Joy Morris, “hanging out” with the Bee Gees and the Beatles
Rich Orr is #3 out of 118 Periodontists in San Mateo. Rich joined Chris Eckert’s Presidents Club as well!
Kitty Lopez. To retrieve the name card she made on vocational day ($5.00)
Bob Binn. For his 50th wedding anniversary, which Linnell and he celebrated in Hawaii. (They both joined the President’s Club!)
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SPEAKER
RANDY RENTSCHLER
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Rentschler
Walt McCullough introduced Randy Rentschler, Director of Legislation and Public Affairs for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).
As an introduction, he used the story of the frog in boiling water as a metaphor for government changing too quickly. The public isn’t ready for it. He showed a real billboard for Dodge with the caption, “No, Caltrans did not pave the roads overnight”.
He talked about the impact on paving roads with the gas tax.
He had a slide with ALL of the initiatives that MTC is involved with—a few of them are: The clipper card; oversight of 26 transportation districts; white tow trucks (to keep transportation corridors moving); regional transportation plan; and a list of the top 10 congested corridors. ALL of which, is on their website, including road conditions of all roads under their jurisdiction (and road fatalities).
As much as the Bay Area road congestion is a problem….Detroit would love to have our problem. It is a sign of a robust economic engine.
If one evaluates the commute choices, we prefer driving. The other options are for our neighbors.
The sure way to incent people (other than our neighbors) to get out of their cars is to raise gas taxes. Someone once asked, “Why don’t we have a monorail, like Disneyland?” Well, Disneyland is fake. And one can’t just introduce a transit corridor into an urban environment that was built to be auto-centric (after WWII). And that we were lucky to have Caltrain, that allowed us to develop a peninsula transit corridor.
He made an interesting analogy to how we frequently made fun of the breadlines in Russia. He commented that the freeways are our breadlines—we spend hours on them.
He noted that they had received a substantial federal investment to electrify Caltrain. This will allow Caltrain to; accelerate faster, provide more flexibility, to go underground in SF, provide cleaner air, and to eventually accommodate high-speed rail.
His thoughts on self-driving cars….it depends on whether we treat them as a car or an airplane. One airplane goes down and we have countless resources to find out what went wrong. Yet, in the case of cars, 40,000 people die in car accidents every year. And we do little to investigate and mitigate the problem. We need to come to terms with the real risks of driving.
Submitted, Rachel Meyer
Photos by Peter Webb
