Gallipolitan
President Deb Rhodes opened the regular meeting of the Gallipolis Rotary Club promptly at 7:15 am with a good crowd of members in attendance. We were missing several of our faithful attenders and hope to see you next week! Since our speaker needed to leave early, we reorganized the order of our meeting today.
Program–Margaret Evans introduced our speaker for the morning, Mike Smith, Municipal Court Probation Officer. Margaret hired Mike soon after her appointment as Municipal Judge, as the court really needed an organizer who could run the department. Mike brought new ideas and some experience with technology to the job. He obviously hit the ground running as the Municipal Court was recognized in a national magazine for its achievements in that first year.
The Municipal Court deals with misdemenors and normally runs a very high caseload. Year to date there are currently 1140 defendants under court supervision with 1755 cases of probation. The court has conducted 806 drug screens with 26% of these screens testing positive. Year to date there have been 276 violations of probation–mostly failing to pay assessed fines, but many for postive drug screens. The probation department has three full time probation officers handling caseloads and year to date has conducted 4,093 face to face meetings with clients.
Mike spoke a few minutes about the electronically monitored house arrest program the court uses in the county. Because the jail is costly to the county and space is tight, a house arrest program can be an excellent alternative, especially with the improved technology. Monitoring is handled with an electronic bracelet that is fixed to the ankle which is in electronic contact at all times. The unit can respond via telephone line or cellular call and has internal battery backup in case of power or phone line failures. Offenders pay fees which offset the costs of the equipment and monitoring. Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology is also built in to locate the offender at all times. This information is transmitted back to the logging server and can even identify substance abuse while on home arrest.
The data is maintained at a secure site and is backed up on multiple servers. Treatment providers and counsellors are also tied into the same data which helps build an individualized plan for the individual on probation. Any missed appointments or other identified deficiencies can be noted immediately by the probation officers. An excellent round of Q & A concluded Mike’s remarks.
President Deb asked Mike to sign a book label for one of the books which will be presented to one of the eight elementary schools and then presented our speaker with a certificate honoring the donation of the book.
Rotary Coin Box–New Rotarian, David Smith, turned in a full coin box this morning to benefit the Rotary Foundation. Thanks, Dave! This should put you about 1/3 of the way to your yearly contribution to the Foundation. Our slogan, “Every Rotarian, Every Year!” encourages participation by all and our coin box is a really easy way to make your contribution. If you need a box, be sure to pick one up next week!
September Board Meeting–President Deb reminded everyone the next club board meeting will be WEDNESDAY, September 3rd, at OVB Main Office, at 1 pm. Red Badge holders need to make at least one board meeting as a requirement for the blue badge.
Blue Badge for Jenny–Jenny Evans received her blue badge this morning from President Deb and retired that old red badge! Congratulations, Jenny, it’s great to have you in the club!
Battle of The Bridge–This Friday is the Gallipolis/Pt. Pleasant football game and the winner of the game gets to hold the Rotary trophy for the year. Matt Willis and several Rotarians plan on attending and we should have some pictures for our web site.
Split-The-Pot–Jim Morrison ran STP for our meeting and collected a $7 small pot. Our lucky winner for the day was Jenny Evans, showing that it pays to attend Rotary! Jenny missed the ‘big one’ of $14 by drawing the six of clubs. The Foundation Fine was assessed against anyone NOT wearing sandals today!
Fellowship–Lou Ellen Werry ran club fellowship today and helped the club wish Marlin Rose a very special birthday! Marlin chipped in a few bucks to get the entire club to sing a ‘better than average’ job of Happy Birthday. We had a number of Happy Buck$ today–Margaret Evans on her recent anniversary; Chuck Clark in honor of an upcoming grandchild; and Cleeland Willis in honor of his wife’s book signing on Sunday. Lou Ellen shared a few interesting sports events–on this day in 1939, the first televised baseball game occured and one beer commercial sponsored the entire game!
President Deb wished everyone a great week, and the meeting was adjourned.