If you missed us in November, following are the announcements:
President Marnie Fitzgerald opened the meeting thanking our host Bunny Michel.
New members Evaleen Horvath and Amy Demas introduced themselves.
Our Holiday Party is Friday, December 6th from 7-9 pm. Please bring a dish to share.
Our Voting meeting in Jan 21st 7 pm at City Hall. The deadline to submit spending requests is Jan 7th. If you have an idea on how / where we should donate funds, please email ideas to Marnie, and she can help flesh them out and figure out next steps. There will also be a form to submit ideas coming soon. A member asked how much we have available to spend. There is an estimated $32K. We will hold back two years of expenses to cover our parties and community events. In the past we spent funds on: playground work, chairs in City Hall, an interactive screen in City Hall to facilitate meetings and new door mats for City Hall.
The Park Commission is planning a spring fundraiser. It will be a one-time, capital campaign to help with maintenance and master plan development for the parks. This might conflict with our typical 5K fundraiser in the spring. Also, we don’t have anyone to chair the 5K yet. Marnie shared the idea that the RWC may take a “pause” / hiatus on our fundraising so the Parks Commission can do their campaign. There will be no decisions tonight just be thinking about this idea. The 5K typically raises $3-8K.
Ashley Covert introduced Katie Montgomery from Saint Louise House our charitable focus for this month. They help the “hidden homeless” who are usually women and children that need more support than shelters can provide and don’t meet minimum requirements for government housing. Katie walked us through their process for helping families get back on their feet. To learn more about Saint Louise House: https://saintlouisehouse.org
There will be a Weekend of Giving event to support Saint Louise House. On Friday, May 15 there will be a dinner, auction and friendly competition. On Sunday, May 17 there will be the tea and bubbles brunch. More information will be on the Saint Louise House website soon.
This concluded the announcements for the meeting. Members then wrapped gifts for the family RWC adopted for the holidays as well as gifts for Saint Louise House residents.