Rotary Bulletin

October 16, 2017

Meeting Minutes

President Ed Presnell called the meeting to order. David Hudson led the club in the pledge and invocation. Clay Jolly introduced our visiting guests and Rotarians and called on Butch Whiddon to introduce students from the Richmond Academy Interact Club. CART raised $305.73 last week with inside challenger Bobby Gagnon and outside challenger American Family Life. This week the inside challenger is Scott Kelly and Greg Hodges from Acura of Augusta is the outside challenger. Richard Rogers provided the Sunshine Report.

Jeff Simless provided a Football Follies update. Daryl Leach and Jim Price were the weekly winners for the last two weeks, and John Whitwell is leading for the year with 78% of the winners being picked. Jeff thanked the sponsors who have provided weekly prizes and announced he was still looking for someone to donate a grand prize.

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INTRODUCTIONS

Shanda Vaughn reported that the Family of Rotary Committee has coordinated a canal boat tour for club members and their family. The tour will take place October 26 with tours leaving at 6:00 and 6:45. There will be music and games in the courtyard before the tours. Please sign up if you are interested in attending.
President Ed recognized the Hull Fund for providing the club with matching funds for our GRSP student, Jakob Fahl. The Hull Fund will also be meeting immediately following the club meeting to discuss additional scholarship requests.
He also recognized Dr. Lamar Veatch with the Georgia WWI Centennial Commission who placed materials on the table and will be available after the meeting to talk about the commission.

Dr. Angela Pringle introduced our speaker for the day – our very own Barry White, President and CEO of the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau. Barry provided an overview of the mission of the CVB and explained how their services are provided without any cost to the local taxpayers. All revenues are generated through hotel taxes paid by visitors. He also shared how the CVB is changing its marketing efforts to put more emphasis on millennials and showing them that Augusta is a desirable destination.

Barry then introduced Jennifer Bowen to give us an update on Augusta’s film industry. Jennifer shared with the club that Georgia is now the number 1 ranked feature film location in the world. This is based on 17 feature films being made in Georgia during 2016. These projects have resulted in a $9.5 billion impact for our state.

Most of this success is due to the Georgia Film Tax Credits which provide a 30% tax credit for projects that spend at least $500,000 in the state. Because these tax credits are transferable, companies find them to be very attractive in helping them recover their production costs. Georgia has implemented a statewide program called Camera Ready to make sure all counties have a designated contact to work with the film industry when they need help finding locations or extras for a project.

Jennifer also shared the two biggest challenges we face in this industry, crew and equipment. We need more depth in providing experienced crew members to work on film projects and there are only a couple of equipment rental companies in our area that can help. As an example, a camera crew on a recent project had to drive to Atlanta for a special light bulb. Jennifer finished by taking questions and encouraged anyone interested in the film industry to list their property on the filmaugusta.com website.

Our next meeting will be on October 16 and our speaker, author Kathryn Smith, will share her book entitled “The Gatekeeper; Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Partnership that Defined a Presidency”.

Easy links to pages on our website
Rotary schedule of meeting dates and speakers
Member Proposal Form
Online directory - Find a member or update your information
Bulletins - Weekly bulletins from 2014-current

Save the Date:

CART

CART buckets
Inside Challenger: Scott Kelly
Outside Challenger: Greg Hodges, Acura of Augusta
Total

$195.99
$195.99
$195.99
$587.97

Guests

Guest
Barry White
Allen Bonds
Lamar Veatch
Surendra Gupta

Guest Of
Guest Speaker
Dee Bruker
Erick Montgomery
TR Reddy

Richmond Academy Interact Club

Augusta Tech Rotaract Club

Visiting Rotarians

Name

Club

Meeting Makeup

Billy Franke On line Make Up 10-16-17
Patrick Cullinan Martinez-Evans Rotary 10-13-17
Kevin Wade Red Badge Orientation 10-16-17
Susan Everitt Red Badge Orientation 10-2-17
Kevin Grogan Rotary Board of Dir. Mtg. 10-17-17

The following will receive a make up for attending the Red Badge Orientation meeting held on Monday, October 16 at Intellisystems:

Bill Kemp
Kevin Wade
Leland Malchow
Herb Upton
Ed Presnell
Shell Berry
Susan Everitt
Eddie Bussey
Andy Carrier

The following will receive a makeup for attending the Rotary Board of Directors meeting held on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 4:30 at Cranston Engineering:

Ed Presnell
Kevin Grogan
Scott Williams
Chris McKinney
Jennifer Pennington
Leland Malchow
Susan Jernigan
Faye Hargrove

Absentees

Forester Adams
David Hogg
Chris Bird
Janice Jackson
Barclay Bishop
Brooks Keel
Steven Boler
Russell Keen
Eddie Booth
Zach Kelehear
Carl Brown
Scott Kelly
Greg Capers
Bill Keogh
Tom Clark
Brian Kyzer
Len Collins
Jim Laura
Jeanette Cummings
Mahendra Mandawat

Tom Denlinger
Carolyn Maund
Neal Dickert
Rob McKenzie
Brenda Durant
Brad Means
Ashlee Duren
Connie Melear
Steve Farmer
Ian Mercier
Jeff Flowers
Frank Mulherin
Billy Franke
Sue Parr
Rick Franza
Jeff Partl
Jeff Futrelle
Leigh Porterfield
Bobby Gagnon
Jonathan Powell

Laverne Gaskins
Daniel Rhodes
Mark Gilliam
Jerry Rogers
Kevin Grogan
Stan Shepherd
Aimee Hall
Deborah Sleeth
Chad Harpley
John Snider
Jeff Spears
Stan Stanton
Kevin Steffes
Kevin Wade
Phil Wahl
Andrew Williams
George Williams
Margaret Woodard
Dustin Young

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