President Peter welcomed us to our 17th in person and 71st virtual meeting during the course of the pandemic.
Book Review: None this week
Club and Committee Announcements
1. There will be a Zoom Board of Directors meeting this Thursday 11-11-21 at 4:30 PM. Any Club member may attend; let Sandee know if you would like to Zoom in.
2. Doug Coleannouncement:
The RCOB is supporting the Whatcom Refugee Resettlement Project by sorting and assembling welcome kits on Saturday, Nov 20, 9am-12pm. 8 to 10 people are needed to help. Contact Doug Cole to sign up. Thank you to the Rotarians who have signed up. Details will be provided shortly. We can still use a few volunteers.
The Whatcom Refugee Project could also use donations, either cash or gift cards. An individual has offered to match the total value of what is received from the RCOB, up to $2,000. Be certain to include “ROTARY” on your donation for your gift to double in size. This website will provide information on the organization and how to donate:
3. Cathy Buckley announced that there are still openings for the ski trip to Breckenridge, February 7 -11, 2022 .
4. BREAKING NEWS - SAVE THE DATE - BELLRINGING WILL BE DECEMBER 11TH. STAY TUNED!! SIGN-UPS WILL BE ON THE TABLES NEXT MONDAY...
5. Rotary Wreath Making Social at The Garden Spot Nursery. Still a few spots available. Let's get together to celebrate the holidays!! Here is a wonderful opportunity!!
Sunday, November 14th at 11 am. $50 per person includes one fresh or grape vine wreath and all the bits and pieces to make them beautiful. We can have up to 20 people for this private event, so invite your spouses and family. We will be outside, so dress warm! Please send Felicity Dye an email (fd@cf-voice.com) to reserve a spot. Please include your best phone number, and let her know if you want a grapevine wreath (they have to make them up ahead of time). Payments will be made directly to The Garden Spot.
4. Football Pool
Mike Plenkovich announced the football pool winners of the past week, U of W vs Oregon: Kathy Hughes, Scott Wallace, John Pedlow and Steve Gray. Congratulations!! Checks will be held by Sandee until you attend a meeting or mailed at the end of the season.
Here are the details of the RCOB football pool for the benefit of newcomers (and old members who may have forgotten!):
There are 100 squares, costing $20 each, for a total income of $2000. All of the squares have now been purchased. $500 is retained by the club and $1500 is distributed to pool winners (those who come closest to predicting the score after each quarter), as follows:
$20/quarter for all college games and regular season NFL games, $25/quarter for NFL playoff games, and $35/quarter for the Super Bowl.
Volunteer Mentorship Opportunity:
This fall Whatcom Community College is launching its first bachelor of applied science (BAS) in business management degree. This degree is specifically geared for the workforce needs of businesses that make up the majority of Whatcom county's employers. Bellingham Bay Rotary is leading a mentorship program with the college and is asking for volunteers. Mentors will work with students in an Organizational Leadership & Teamwork class in winter quarter 2022. The mentorship program will be approximately 8 weeks long, occurring between January-March 2022. Details about the time, days, and topics would be mutually agreed upon between mentor and student.
If you are willing to participate in this short, vocational service mentorship program, please contact Mike Bate (mikebates9@aol.com<mailto:mikebates9@aol.com>), past-president for Bellingham Bay Rotary or Tresha Dutton(tdutton@whatcom.edu<mailto:tdutton@whatcom.edu>), past-president and current faculty at Whatcom Community College, by the end of September, 2021.
Please also contact President Peter or Sandee if you are interested!
You will still receive an email from Sandee each week prior to the Monday 12:30 meeting if you are unable to attend in person (you can start logging in at 12:00 for short socializing) with the link for that privacy protected meeting. If you have not done so, please download the Zoom app on your computer (you need a camera and microphone on it), iPad or phone. There is no cost to you. If you do not have either, you can also call in. On the invitation, there are US phone numbers you can call and enter the meeting ID number also indicated on the invitation. HERE ARE ZOOM INSTRUCTIONS.
Four Points is not requiring a Contract thru 2021 and need only 72 hours to cancel an event. We will continue to evaluate other locations for a permanent location. Lunch will be $22 for a sit down meal. We must notify them by Wednesday at 4:00 pm each week prior to the Monday meeting as to the number of members attending. We are sending out meeting “Invite's” weekly and members are asked to sign-up ASAP. You can also sign-up by going to the event section of our website at bellinghamrotary.org. If you sign up for a meal at the meeting, you will need to pay the $22 even if you don't wind up attending the meeting after numbers are turned in. If you plan to attend but not eat, PLEASE indicate that on your sign-up so we don't overorder meals and still make sure there is enough seating.
Four Points also will not collect the payment weekly, so the Club will collect payments prior to the meeting or at the door.
We urge members of the RCOB has set up a Venmo account for ease in payment of Meeting lunches, Happy Bucks, Minister of Fun, Dues or donations to the club. Our account is @RCOB-Bellingham. If you do not have a Venmo account you can set up an account with your computer then download the app. on your phone (just Google "Venmo" and you will find all the information you need) You then attach it to a debit or credit card (a fee on your end) or attach to your checking account at no cost. Payment will be sent directly to the RCOB checking account. When you use it for the first time it may ask you the last 4 digits of the RCOB phone number which is 0282. Give Sandee a call if you need help. 360-734-5532
Other payment options are to bring a check in the correct amount to the meeting made out to RCOB or cash in the exact amount to speed up the payment process. There is also the PayPal option as usual and we are set to take payments at the meeting. We have a QR Code that you can simply click on to pay thru paypal also.
Website and Phone App instructions:
Here is a tutorial on how to login for the first time. (Click here) In order to login you need to know your user name and password in your Clubrunner account. The user name is Yourfirstname.Lastname.264 unless you have changed it. Example: Sandra.Lindhout.264 The password is initially set by Clubrunner at 264 unless you have changed it. Sandee can see your Username from her computer but not the password. She can also change your password for you from her computer at your request if you run into problems.
Once you have originally created your User Name and Password you can download the ClubRunner Mobile app on your phone:
Please contact Sandee at 360-734-5532 or rcob@comcast.net if you run into any trouble.
Guests:
Doug Cole introduced our speaker, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
Other members who were on Zoom: Bob Morse, Dick Tucker, Chuck Snyder, Greg Grant, John Dunne, Vinson Latimore, Kathy Hughes, Michael Mallory, Robin Halliday and Monty McAllister
Presentation: New Member Talk by Corey Chaplin
The Rotary Club of Bellingham welcomed our newest member, Corey Chaplin. Corey grew up in the eastern Washington town of Selah, which had one elementary school, one middle school and one high school. One of four boys, he reports that everyone in town knew the Chaplin boys. He set several school swimming records in high school, only to be repeatedly eclipsed by his younger brother. In his senior year, Corey was voted most likely to succeed. He was, as he says “a big fish in a small pond”. He was only one of three students in his high school class to attend college out of state. Prior to leaving for Boston to attend M.I.T., he hadn’t been east of the Idaho border.
On the East Coast, he discovered a multi-cultural world that was all new to him. On his first trip to Europe, the “$10 a day" variety, he experienced a new world and found that many
Europeans knew more about his country than he knew about any of theirs. Corey graduated with an engineering degree.
In 1980, Corey met Janet, a Hospice Chaplain, and they soon married. In 1990, they moved from San Francisco to Bellingham, looking for and finding a better quality of life. In the process, he took a 40% pay cut and learned to say no to better career opportunities, so that he could enjoy more quality time with Janet and their two children.
Once the kids were grown, he said yes to a career opportunity in 2011 which took him and Janet to Brazil for two years, fulfilling a long time desire to live in a foreign country. This was followed by work in Abu Dhabi, Denver and Atlanta. In 2020, Corey finally retired. He enjoys hiking, cycling, photography and swimming.
Program:
Program Chair Doug Cole welcomed our speaker, Bob Ferguson, the Washington State Attorney General. (To accommodate his schedule, our speaker took the podium before the usual business agenda.)
Mr. Ferguson is serving his second term as Attorney General. Among his personal projects is to climb the tallest peak in each of the 50 states (he has completed 45 so far). He also took a road trip to see a game in every major league baseball stadium. While this is his first visit to the Rotary Club of Bellingham, it is not his first Rotary meeting. Today’s meeting completes another of his projects: attending a meeting of all 190 Rotary Clubs in the State of Washington.
Mr. Ferguson explained that the Attorney General’s office has about 1,500 to 1,600 employees, including about 600 attorneys. This makes it the largest law firm in the state. The work they do can be divided into two areas. First, the office is the legal advisor for the State, including the legislature, state boards, commissions and entities like the Department of Corrections. Second, it does affirmative work on behalf of the people of the state. For example, it brings actions on behalf of the public for violations of the Consumer Protection Act and civil rights and anti-trust laws.
Mr. Ferguson explained that politics does not enter into the work of the Attorney General’s
office. He noted that, when he took office, although his politics were different than his predecessor's, he retained all of the senior leaders of the department. His view is that their work and the work of the office must be independent of politics. He also noted that Rob McKenna, a Republican who preceded him as Attorney General, had done the same thing, keeping all of the senior leaders from the Democratic AG who preceded him.
Unfortunately, one of the busiest areas in the office involves child abuse. The office has some 100 attorneys assigned exclusively to child abuse cases and, while this is 1 out of every 6 attorneys, they are still understaffed. These attorneys are filing cases in every county in the state.
Mr. Ferguson gave some other examples of the work done by the office. One is to enforce the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) which prohibits “unfair or deceptive” trade practices. The office receives some 20,000 CPA complaints a year. One case was against Comcast. Citizens had complained that, buried in the schedule of “fees” in the monthly bill was a $5 charge that appeared to be some sort of a government tax. In fact, Comcast was simply billing consumers, collecting the money and making it appear that it was for some governmental entity. Mr. Ferguson actually looked at his own bill and saw that he, too, was being charged $5 every month for something that looked like a tax. When Mr. Ferguson contacted Comcast, he was told they would remove it from his bill. Instead, his office sued Comcast for 450,000 violations of the CPA and collected some $10 million in damages and fines.
Another major case, involving opioids, begins next week in the King County Superior Court
against three large manufacturers of opioids. The manufacturers are accused of delivering much more opioids to numerous Washington counties than is legitimately needed. Other states have filed similar suits against the same manufacturers and settled. Mr. Ferguson, on behalf of the State of Washington, has not settled, claiming the settlements are not adequate. He noted that the AG's office discovered this problem during its routine work of looking for “red flags” in numerous data sets. In this case, the data showed that, in a number of Washington communities, there were more opioid prescriptions than there were people! Mr. Ferguson expects it to be a multi-month trial and will be live streamed.
In response to questions from members, Mr. Ferguson again noted the importance of
separating law from politics. As an example, he explained that he is personally against the death penalty but that his office engages in litigation that enforces the death penalty. He
explained that they take an oath to enforce the laws regardless of personal views or beliefs.
When asked about certain elected officials, such as sheriffs, who publicly state that they are
not going to enforce certain gun laws, Mr. Ferguson noted that, although he does not have the authority to force local public officials to enforce laws, his office reminded gun shop owners that they still must comply with the laws, or face consequences from the State.
When asked about newspaper accounts of Tim Eyman's failure to comply with a court order to pay millions of dollars in fines for violations of the Public Disclosure Act requirements, Mr. Ferguson reported that Mr. Eyman had paid some $500,000 to date. However, when the
court declared his violations of disclosure laws “egregious”, Mr. Eyman suddenly stopped paying or responding to inquiries. The AG's office will seek to enforce the court’s order.
Finally, Mr. Ferguson reported that his office often takes up cases against the federal
government, regardless of which political party is in power. For example, in one of his first such cases, he successfully sued fellow Democrat President Obama's administration for its lack of adequate safety protocols for workers at the Hanford Nuclear Site. He subsequently brought 47 suits against President Trump's administration and won 45 of them.
Covid Report:
President Peter passed on the report from Gary Goldfogel that there are currently 35 COVID-19 patients in St. Joseph Hospital, 7 in the ICU, with 7 scheduled for discharge.
Final Announcement:
President Peter thanked those who participated in the meeting and adjourned the meeting at 1:30 PM.
