President Steve Stauffer rang the bell at 8:00
Kevin Courtney offered the prayer and led the pledge
Announcements:
NO MEETING next week November 20!!
Forty Holiday baskets will be delivered on Tuesday November 20. Deliverers: meet at Piggly Wiggly in Coligny at 4:00. If you have not signed up and want to deliver baskets, contact John Farrenkopf. Social will be at Lagerheads after delivery.
Raffle & Auction - Auction will be kicked off after Thanksgiving
Ivan Bennett reported on Early Act and provided brochures. Meetings will be the second Tuesday of the month after school - 2:45 - 3:45 at the Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts. The meetings will go through May
Membership: this meeting is the first posting for Stephanie Eikenberry and Tim Henderson
photo credit Barry Davis
New member Josh Gruber was inducted by Bruce Yeager. Welcome to the club, Josh!!
John Farrenkopf was acting Sergeant at Arms. He welcomed visiting Rotarians and guests and collected Happy $$
Visiting Rotarian:Ken Nykiel, Shaumburg IL
Visiting Rotarian:Ken Nykiel, Shaumburg IL
Guests: Joe R, guest of Barry Davis; Joyce Prange, guest of John Prangue; Stephanie Eikenberry, guest of John Cunningham; Tim Henderson, guest of Tim Ridge; Charles Wahl
Speaker
Alan Wolfe, Director of Operations of the Serg Group, was introduced. His topic was the Business Workforce Coalition.
photo credit Barry Davis
He spoke of the challenges that Hilton Head Island faces trying to balance and provide a quality of life, taking the following into consideration: availability of servers, cost and quality. According to a housing needs assessment. there is a need for 1500 units to address the housing need on Hilton Head Island - with a total of 2200 in both HHI and Bluffton. Workforce needs: 18,000 people employed as of August 2017 and 10, 000 jobs needs from off island. Solution is to have housing on HHI where people work. All the the job types are not equal - Education, Medical, Hospitality. Local obstacles of develolpment are zoning, height restrictions, land development cost is high, people don't want affordable housing in their neighborhood, traffic and short term rentals.
They have had a summit to discuss this problem and have brought together five representatives of areas that have had similar problems to provide input. Products discussed are: dormitories, micro apartments, garden style apartments, single family homes. The challenge is the appearance must be quality, sustainable and cross government approved - town, county and state. Legislative actions - additional tax just on restaurants, property tax relief programs?, zoning and density issues. Next step, they are working with a consultant.
Question was posed about using commercial properties that are no longer in use and develop them into housing. Problem is many would have to be knocked down and not a lot of developers want to rehab old stuff.