June 9, 2006
Okay before everyone starts yelling, I know that I’ve been a little lax in writing a
newsletter for the past several weeks. Usually I have a good excuse, “we didn’t meet,
there wasn’t a speaker, I didn’t make the meeting, I’m too busy” ....blah blah blah.
And that brings me to this week’s topic (since I really don’t have much to write about
anyway), excuses. Excuses are lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant
truths. But as long as we buy into those excuses, we can never move past them.
Instead of addressing the underlying problem, we merely hide the symptoms. So no
more excuses! I’m going to try and write something every week, even if it kills (my
guess is that this is going to last about 2 maybe 3 weeks).
So several weeks ago we had Doug Beck from Auburn Parks and Recreation
stopped by to give us an update about the Fishing Derby. Doug said that there has
been a long term relationship between the kids and the community in regards to the
Fishing Derby. It’s a great event that depends on a three way partnership: first with
the fish hatchery which incredibly has not raised the price of the fish in the last five
years; second the Exchange Club which provides the bulk of the funding for the
project; and third the State of Maine which helped the derby by stocking addition fish
at Pettingill Park. They stocked the pond between April 10th and May 10th with about
500 trout.
A little history of the Fishing Derby, it started initially at the Lake Auburn Outlet, and
began the partnership with the Exchange Club about 12 years ago. Then the Derby
moved to its current location, Pettingill Park. The kids catch about 25% of the fish: the
first weekend is for the older kids, and the second weekend is for the younger kids.
Doug also talked about Parks and Rec.’s summer activities. This is the 14th year that
Tom Menendez will be coaching the Summer Track & Field team. There are around
100 to 150 kids registered this year. The program has grown from around 20 kids to
over a 100. Doug also told us about the Summer Day Camp. The program runs for
7 weeks, each kid gets both breakfast and lunch and is $275.00 per kid for the whole
program. The reason that the program is so inexpensive is that the city got a federal
grant to cover most of the expenses and that the fee goes to cover staff costs.
The next several weeks we didn’t have a speaker. The two major topics that were up
for discussion is whether we should move the Gun Show to the Collisee. Chris
Bellevue has met with Jeff Schumacher, and it looks like it would cost the club
about $9,000.00 to put the show on. We (the club that is) still has to crunch some
numbers to see if it would work. There will be several advantages and disadvantages
to moving. A big advantage is that we solve our perennial parking problem, however,
we do lose the concession stand. So, on June 27th, the club will meet over at the
Collisee, have lunch and take a tour of the facilities.
Last week, we had a John Higgins sighting. John said that he’s working around 60 to
70 hours a week in both his regular job and at the shop helping out his mom. He hasn’t
had the time to come to the past two meetings. This brought up another major item
for discussion, since the club doesn’t really have anyone to consistently sell the
sponsorships for the golf tournament, rather than lose money on the project this year,
it was decided that we drop th golf tournament this year.
While I’m Thinking About It....
Ben Bellevue was the guest of his Dad two weeks ago. Not much has been going on,
I did hear that the Bellevues had bought a new house either next door or across the
street from John Hyman. Other than that, there really hasn’t been much going on.
Coming Up...
June 13th: Open date
June 20th: Open date
June 27th: Meeting and lunch at the Collisee (there won’t be a meeting at
Rolandeau’s that week).
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