Los Altos Rotary Club Home of the Annual Rotary Fine Art Show July 17th, 2008

President SETH MANNING called the meeting to order with his usual dedication in honor of Rotarians LEE LYNCH and BILLY RUSSELL who are fondly remembered for their spirit and dedication to Rotary.
 
SANDI WHIPPLE, the financial whiz who keeps tabs on all our Rotary money, led the pledge of allegiance.  Multi-talented ops manager JACK KELLY (he’s quite a golfer, too.) gave the thought for the day by sharing Light of Faith by author Edgar A. Guest. The inspirational piece ended with the thought that “there be no misunderstanding about how you act and how you live.”  That’s the kind of thinking that reminds us of our own Four Way Test.
 
In a tribute to the All Star Baseball game, JOHN SYLVESTER led a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” which made me wonder how our own Rotary ball team is doing.  Hopefully, better than the National League.
 
Prez SETH thanked greeters, JOHN MOSS, KAREN OWEN and JEAN NEWTON (yes double duty today as Rotator writer, too). However, he forgot to mention DAVE SNOW who also stood with us to greet and shake hands with members and guests as they arrived.  The Photographer of record was BAIDRA MURPHY (have you seen her amazing photos of Bilbao?). Sergeant at Arm duties were shared by SCOTT FLEMING and MIKE ABRAMS.  Our cash man was retired banker WYATT ALLEN.
 
IT’S A SMALL WORLD
We were honored to have Bala (G Balasubrahmanyan) a visiting Rotarian from RC of Madras Coromandel, Dist 3230, India. This year he is serving as Director of International Service for his club and is very interested in learning more about our own Rotary AIDS Project so ALLART LIGTENBERG shared info with him. Since his daughter now lives in Los Altos, we hope he will visit us again soon.  MIKE ABRAMS, who also sat next to Bala, discovered they had a connection through Mike’s wife who serves on the Board of Directors of a company that donates computers and visits India every three months.
 
ROTARIANS AND THEIR GUESTS
Starting with Pres SETH, Rotarians JEANNE MACVICAR, KENDRA GJERSETH, JOHN CARDOZA all introduced their guests to the club.
 
ART, VINO AND CHICKEN SALAD
It was a good weekend for chicken salad as JACK HEIDMILLER reported that LARC raised about $7451.08, give or take 30 cents, at the Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival in Downtown Los Altos.  You just can’t go wrong when you are serving one of Chef Chu’s famous signature dishes.  Thanks to LARRY CHU for “working morning till night” and to all the volunteers, who all stood up to be acknowledged, for their volunteer efforts on Saturday and Sunday.

 
SISTER CITIES NEEDS STORAGE
Talk to JACK HEIDMILLER if you are willing to sell, donate, lease or rent a storage locker or if you have a place to store some Sister Cities items.
 
TWO PIECES OF PAPER
Just before he had to leave for jury duty and turning the meeting over to Past President JOHN, Prez SETH reminded everyone to fill out this year’s survey and sign the form to pledge money to the Foundation so we can all become double sustainers.
 
GOLFING TO A TEE
PP JOHN introduced STEVE SHEPHERD who said he was excited to announce the results of the golf tournament held on June 20th in spite of the fact that his name wasn’t on the trophy.  Winners included JEAN NEWTON FRAGUGLIA (that’s fra-gool-ya) with a low net of 75 and ROGER ENG with a low net of 68. Kathy Anderson, our busy secretary STEVE ANDERSON’s spouse, was the women’s Blind Bogey winner with a 73.  A tiebreaker between STEVE FICK and DANTON BRACKUS was broken by a secret method (known only to Steve Shepherd) with Steve Fick capturing the Blind Bogey honors.
 
NO, IT DIDN’T GO TO MEL KAHN
Instead, Women’s Closest to the Pin went to Norma Rayl, BOB RAYL’s spouse, who also took home the Longest Drive prize.  Steve Fraguglia (that’s fra-gool-ya) received Closest to the Pin, but no one’s talking about what happened to the yellow ball on his team.
 

YELLOW AND WE DO MEAN YELLOW
Winners of the Yellow Ball Award, JERRY and BILL MOISON, LARRY CHU and DANTON BRINGAS also won Team Costume of the Year Award for the fanciest knickers ever seen on a golf course.  According to STEVE SHEPHERD you, too, can order some at knickers.com.  (Knockers, knickers, whatever.)
 
POKER FACES ROY LAVE, BOB ADAMS, and STEVE SHEPHERD raked in the chips to the tune of $72 a piece to win the poker tournament.
 
AND FINALLY, THE TROPHY GOES TO The real golfers in the bunch who do have their names permanently engraved on the perpetual trophy are MONA ARMISTEAD and DANTON BRINGAS.  A big thank you to STEVE and BEV SHEPHERD for hosting the dinner at their home.
 
KINDER & GENTLER RECOGNITION STILL COSTS BUCKS
Recognition master, PP JOHN MOSS, managed to extract a few dollars from the following:  CAREW MCFALL for a family reunion; JOHN SYLVESTER for his daughter’s Hawaiian wedding; DWIGHT MATTHEWS joined the President’s club just because; MARLENE COWAN for a first place Mercedes and greetings from our friends George and Ann Perham in Paso Robles; WILL CORKERN joined the president’s club for his 45th wedding anniversary; BRIAN WARD for an eight hour nap and BRUCE CAAN for a nine hour nap on flights home from Australia; DAVE BERONIO for celebrating his mother’s 98th birthday with a smile as she ordered an extra sweet old-fashioned; VICTORIA EMMONS for her daughter’s pre-engagement announcement; JACK HEIDMILLER for the crew who worked at the Art & Wine festival; MIKE ABRAMS for his wife who opened the London Stock Exchange; LARRY MADSEN for his granddaughter swimming within .05 seconds of making the finals at the Olympic Trials in Omaha; RICH CASEY joined the President’s Club for his birthday and because he’s driving his son to medical school in August; GREG DABB for beating the alternative with his July birthday; KEN GRAHAM also for celebrating his birthday; ALLART because his solar cooker reached the top of Mt. Everest; ROLAND PAYNE for starting his last quarter of a century; BILL PALMER pledged an IOU for 63 years of wedded bliss; BILL MOISON for either his wife’s July birthday or their anniversary in March or Feb.  Congrats to all and thanks to KENDRA for duck bucket duty.
 
THE TAX MAN COMMETH   Our speaker was Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone whose facts, figures and percentages were flying at us fast and furiously.  A fellow Rotarian with the San Jose Club, Stone has been elected four times and last spoke to our club in 2005.  He waited for a traditional boo before he launched into an overview of the current state of assessed valuation in the County, which has been affected by several factors during the past year.  His job is to accurately assess property values and his staff reviews thousands of title documents, building permits and business property assets to come up with over 3 billion dollars worth of property taxes on an annual basis.  The money goes to education, city and county programs, and special districts, such as water and fire.
 
THOUGHTS ON VALUE
While the real estate market has been affected by the sub prime mortgage mess and foreclosures are up in certain areas like East San Jose, Milpitas, Gilroy and Morgan Hill, Stone says Santa Clara County is not nearly as bad as other counties in the state. It’s the low-end of the market that has been hit the hardest. In the high-end residential areas with excellent schools like Los Altos, values are stable.  Though transactions may be down, appreciation has gone up by 8 percent in Los Altos, 11 percent in Palo Alto and 10 percent in Cupertino. Stone believes good school districts do make a difference in supporting high property values.
 
On the commercial side, rents are up and vacancies are down. Although there are concerns of recession, Stone says Silicon Valley is a barometer with everything happening here “first, fastest, good, bad, up and down” and the gradual decline in the rate of assessment growth has been buoyed by the tech sector.
 
ASSESSMENT MYTHS
Stone addressed some of the myths associated with assessment:
 
The assessed valuation is not always based on the purchase price when there is a change of ownership but rather on the fair market value.
 
If you don’t add square feet when remodeling you generally won’t be reassessed.  However, if you are building a substantially new house, it will be reassessed as if it were a new home.
 
Santa Clara County is one of the few counties that sends out a postcard notification of the assessed valuation of your property.  If you don’t agree with the assessment, Stone says you can file an appeal between July 2 and September 15.
 
It was an informative talk filled with lots of facts and figures so if you do have a question about any of the above information (which is deemed reliable but not guaranteed) do check out www.scc-assessor.org or call 408-299-5300.
 
After telling Stone that a book would be donated to a third grader in his honor in lieu of a speaker’s gift, Past President JOHN sent us on our way with the bang of the gavel.
 

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