Greeter of the WeekGreeter of the Week
OFF THE ROTARY WHEEL
Rotary Club of Altadena
AN AWARD-WINNING NEWSLETTER
March 15, 2018
This WeekThis Week
March 08Doug Collifl ower
March 15Craig Cox
March 22Steve Cunningham
This Month is All Wet
Please turn to Dialing p. 4
Please turn to This Week p. 3
Camille Levee:An Overview of Wellness Works & How They support Veteran’s FamiliesProgram Host: Tom McCurry
M
Dialing InDialing InDialing InBy Steve Kerekes,
President
March is Water and Sanitation
Month on the Rotary Calendar.
There are 2.5 billion people in the
world who lack access to minimum sanita-
tion standards and 748 million people that
have no access to clean drinking water. Many
children die each day from diseases caused
by lack of sanitation and unsafe water.
In 2015, the United Nations introduced
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
to end poverty and promote prosperity while
protecting the environment and addressing
climate change. These goals encourage us
to address obtaining universal access to
drinking water and sanitation along with
stopping the spread of infectious diseases
caused by poor sanitation and improving
water management in order to protect
ecosystems.
Rotary International had partnerered
with UNICEF to institute a pilot program
to help develop sustainable water, sani-
tation, & hygiene (collectively referred to
as WASH), as well as education projects
using the expertise and resources available
through two of Rotary’s areas of focus: ba-
sic education and literacy and water
and sanitation. The program focuses on
measuring the impact that WASH and basic
education and literacy initiatives have on
school attendance. Rotary and UNICEF will
recognize Rotary clubs and schools whose
WASH in Schools projects achieve various
benchmarks. During the pilot phase, the
program will run through July 2020 in fi ve
countries — all chosen for their strong, active
involvement in school sanitation efforts:
Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, India, and
Kenya. Read more about it at <https://
my.rotary.org/en/wash-schools-tar-
get-challenge>.
Since 2009, Rotary International has
worked in partnership with US Agency
for International Development (USAID) to
develop programs that support improve-
ments to water, sanitation, and hygiene
in developing countries. The partnership
Camille Levee is the immediate past
president of South Pasadena Rotary and
currently serves on the District Peace
Conference Committee.
Levee has served as the District 5300
Dan Stover Music Contest Chair, the Dis-
trict 5260 Interact Alliance Coordinator
and the District 5140 RI Foundation
Stewardship Chair, and just completed
Chairmanship of the District 5300 Rotary
Wheels in Heels Program which raised
over $13,000 for the RI Foundation.
She currently serves as Vice- President
of the Board of Wellness Works and is
the Executive Director of the Dental
Foundation of California.
<> <> <>
Wellness Works was founded in 1986
as a community resource to promote
wellness in the community. In 2007,
they redefi ned their mission as Engaging
the community in inspiring hope and
Sparks - Altadena Rotary Club Newsletter2
A
CongratulationsBirthdaysBirthdays
03/08 - Jeri Cunningham03/14 - Steve Cunningham
03/15 - Trish Robinson03/15 - David P. Smith
Anniversaries03/01 - Tim & Etta McCurry
03/13 - Steve Kerekes & Sunny Wu03/30Dennis Mehringer & Noriko Suzuki
Congratulations
Sparks is published 48 weeks a year and is the offi cial publication of the Rotary Club of Altadena. The deadline for submission of articles is Friday at 6p to current editor email, fax, or delivery.
Rotary Club of Altadena - #7183Chartered: February 14, 1949
P.O. Box 414, Altadena, CA 91003www.altadenarotary.comMeets: Thursday, 12:10p
Altadena Town & Country Club2290 Country Club Drive • Altadena, CA
626-794-7163Rotary Int. Pres................................. Ian H.S. RiseleyDist 5300 Gov. ............................... Raghada Khoury
Offi cersSteve Kerekes, Pres. ...................Bus. 626-796-5000Sarah O’Brien, Pres. Elec. ..........Bus. 310-902-6547Charlie Wilson, V. Pres. ..............Bus. 626-351-8815Mark Mariscal, Sec. ...................... Bus. 323-816-6713Mike Noll, Trea. ............................Bus. 626-683-0515
DirectorsMindy Kittay • Anthony Hill
Charlie Wilson • Dennis MehringerJames Gorton • Sarah O’Brien • Mark Mariscal
ChairmenSarah O’Brien ..................................... AdministrationDavid Smith .............................................. Foundation Steve Cunningham .....................Asst. FoundationCraig Cox ..................................................MembershipJacque Foreman ........................... Public Awareness Jacque Foreman ...........................Acting Publicity Jacque Foreman ...........................Sparks/WebsiteMike Zoeller ...........................................Club Projects Craig Cox ..............................................Community Doug Collifl ower ...................Asst. Community John Frykenberg ............................... International Tony Hill .......................... Youth Contests/Awards Mike Zoeller .....................................Youth Projects Ray Carlson ............................................VocationalEditor, Design & Typesetting ........... Foreman GraphicsPhotography ...........................................Jacque Foreman
Tom McCurry
MarchWater & Sanitation
Program Chair, Tom McCurryMarch 15 - Camille Levee - An overview
of Wellness Works & how they support Veteran’s Families
March 22 - Frank Cunningham - Craft TalkMarch 29 - Dan Stover Music Contst - Club-
-Level Competition
Program ReviewProgram Review
The 4-Way Speech ContestClub Level Competition
Altadena was
honored to
host the sec-
ond round of the
4-Way Speech Con-
test for this area. Mark Mariscal did an excel-
lent job of hosting the contest and providing
some excellent judges and timekeeper. The
judges were: Charles Thomas, Mary Novak,
and Mindy Kittay, with Gary Novak bring
our time keeper.
The contestants were Bailey Garcia,
Michael Wilkins, and Joel Turk – all from
Maranatha, Jesus Hernandez from John
Muir High School, and Sofi e Wolfe from
LaSalle High School. Their topics ranged
from human traffi cking to animal cruelty to
support of teachers to a personal journey
from the dark side to being a student leader.
It was a tough decision for the judges
to select a fi rst and second place winner
because of the high quality of each of the
presentations. But the eventual winners
were Joel Turk (1st place) and Michael
Wilkins (2nd place). Joel will go to the next
round of the contest and Michael will be the
back-up contestant, if necessary.
We were very encouraged by the quality
and energy of these young people and the
parents and teachers that accompanied
them to the contest.
(l to r) Mark Mariscal, Contest Organier; Contestants Jeusus Hernandez, Joel Turk, Michael Wilkins, Bailey Garcia, and Sophie Wolfe with Immediate Past President, Charlie Wilson behind
Sparks - Altadena Rotary Club Newsletter 3
W
by Craig Cox, Community Service Chair
hairmen’s ornerCornerChairmen’s
Projects Committee to Meet to decide on a Community
Project for Spring
This WeekContinued from p. 1
Wi t h o u r
Summer
Concer t
efforts established
(and my March concert commitment done),
it is time to reconvene a meeting of the
Projects Committee to organize our
Spring project!
Right now we are kicking around a
project to add a surface to the fence that
surrounds the tennis courts at Loma Alta
Park. This would be for tennis players who
want to hit balls to warm up or practice.
We are open to any other ideas as well,
but are looking for a project on the north-
west side of town.
Please mark your calendar for Thursday,
March 22 at 7:00p for a meeting at Craig
Cox’ home (3944 Altura Ave., La Crescenta).
Concerts in the Park Update
The fundraising and production com-
mittees are wrapping up their efforts. We
are $1500 away from our goal of $20,000
for the concerts and have booked acts all
8 weeks. Our Promotion and Permits/
Facilities committees will now start their
work in earnest.
If you would like to get involved please
reach out to Mike Zoeller or me, either of
us can get you plugged in.
providing wholeness of body and soul
for veterans and their families.
To accomplish this, Wellness Works pro-
vides a continuum of treatments for PTSD,
TBI and MST for veterans. Case management
provides them with the opportunity to be
successful in re-integration into society.
Wellness Works can be found at <www.
wellnessworksglendale.org>.
In their own words, Welcome Works
is “a non-profi t community resource that
provides training, education and treatments
for self-healing in an atmosphere of com-
passion and joy.”
It was a Short Trip from the word Slav to SlaveHere is How it Happened
Here I am again taking information
from one of my favorite books: The Unex-
pected Evolution of Language by Justin
Cord Hayes. This time we we are looking
at the transformation of Slave being only
an alternative spelling of Slav to meaning
a person owned by another and forced to
work for free.
Several thousand years ago, in portions
of present-day Poland and Russia, lived a
group of people who called themselves
Slavos. For them, slovo meant word, so
they were the people who speak words.
In Latin, slovos ultimately transformed
to Slav (and was capitalized). The Slavs were
agrarian for the most part, rather than war-
riors. Thus, they often were conquered by
others. At one time or another, seemingly
every nation of the midieval world con-
quered the Slavs, including the Celts, the
Huns and the Goths.
Some of the Slavs fi nally got wise and
began to organize themselves into martial
groups that tried their own hands at invasion
and conquering. They invated the Balkans,
and they tried to take land away from the
Germans
The Germans, in modern parlance,
kicked Slavic as. The Germans repelled the
Slavs from their turf and turned many of
them into servants. For the Germans, slave
was just an alternate spelling of Slave. Thus,
slave became someone forced to work by
another and, by extension, someone owned
by another.
by Jacque Foreman, Editor
Sparks - Altadena Rotary Club Newsletter4
DialingContinued from p. 1
combines Rotary’s network of volunteers
with the expertise of USAID to help solve
seemingly unsolvable problems in water and
sanitation in those countries. In 2015, the
collaboration committed $4 million each to
Ghana, Uganda, and Madagascar, with each
partner providing half of the funds needed.
Rotary is seeking to raise $200,000 for each
country by the end of this year as part of
its $2 million per country commitment.
The investment will support WASH project
design, implementation and monitoring,
as well as help develop appropriate and
sustainable processes and tools using the
WASH Sustainability Index Tool, which
helps to determine the long-term technical
and fi nancial sustainability of WASH proj-
ects. You can read more about the Rotary
– USAID partnership at <https://www.
rotary.org/en/usaid>.
<> <> <>
Some recent examples of clubs involved
in water and sanitation projects are as
follows;
• Dave Smith’s (Altadena Rotary) recent
trip to India with the Dream Team to
work on an irrigation dam and admin-
ister polio vaccinations… . An irrigation
dam is an earthen dam that stores the
water so that there is a constant supply
of water for the crops. Since 2008, the
Rotary Dream Team has gone to India
every year to work hands-on with hu-
manitarian projects in the heart of India.
Before or after the project, they also usu-
ally take a short holiday to enjoy a slice
of India’s cultural fl avors and landscapes.
This year, the project was located near
Udaipur, a city in the western Indian state
of Rajasthan.
• South Pasadena Rotary has been
involved in several deep well water proj-
ects in Africa over the years. The most
recent one, which was sponsored with
the Rotary Club of Indianola, Iowa and
was completed in December 2015, was at
the Kigogo sub-village in the Kilimanjaro
region of Tanzania. You may recall that,
in February of last year, Dick Ross from
the South Pasadena Club came and gave
a presentation at one of our luncheons
about that project. Currently, they are
working on a Global Grant for a project
in Mhezi — in the Kilimanjaro District —
to encase a natural spring in the hillside
and use it for a distribution system on
the lower hillside and the plains below.
They are actively seeking fi nancial and
program partners to accomplish this.
• Bangalore Metro Rotary in India in-
stalled a water purifi cation plant in the
village of Ramanahalli. Due to extensive
mining, the ground water in this rural
community is completely contaminated
with fl uorides and other contaminants.
The new water purifi cation plant pro-
vides reliable access to potable water.
• In the rural community of Bharat Pokha-
ri in Nepal, villagers walk 25 km to fetch
buckets of water every day. Oftentimes
girls spend two hours a day bringing
home water before and after school. In
partnership with Williamson Rotary
(USA), the Pokhara Rotary installed a
water tank in the village, giving more
than 500 families access to safe drinking
water closer to home.
• Suna Migori Rotary in Kenya has
provided a source of clean rainwater to
students at four schools and a clinic. At
each location, Rotarians provided new
latrines and hand washing stations. The
project has impacted more than 1,500
students and their families, hundreds
of patients at the clinic, and increased
school attendance, especially among
girls.
REAL ESTATE
by Doug Collifl owerwith the Altadena Realty GroupM
atters
Renovation without Permits:Risk vs Reward
When considering a home renovation
project and beginning to calculate the cost,
it is only natural to look at ways to save
some cash. One popular line item is the
permit fees. Not only is cost a concern
but we all want to avoid delays waiting
for inspections, required corrections and
re-inspections that are often required. The
bigger concern, most often when a permit
is issued is that it triggers a reassessment by
the assessor, often leading to an increase in
your property taxes.
There are a number of risks to consider
before by-passing the permit step in your
renovation plan:
• Should you have an electrical fi re or
water damage due to a leak or broken
pipe in the area of the renovation or
addition, your insurance company may
deny your claim, leaving you to deal with
a large repair bill.
• When you go to sell, by law you must
disclose repairs and renovations com-
pleted without permits. Should you not
disclose, in most cases the buyer will
Please turn to Real Estate, p. 5
Sparks - Altadena Rotary Club Newsletter 5
Real EstateContinued from p. 4
discover the unpermitted work while
completing their physical inspections and
due-diligence. In both cases, this often
leads prospective buyers to negotiate the
price down due to anticipated costs for
bringing the property into compliance.
• If you were to complete the sale without
proper disclosure, you run the risk of a
lawsuit — should or when your buyer
makes the discovery.
Examples of
Non-Permitted Renovations
• One East San Francisco Bay homeowner
hired a contractor to convert a shed into
a studio apartment for his daughter to
live in. The contractor did the job with-
out a city building permit. Before going
through with the sale, the buyers talked
to a city building inspector to fi nd out
what it would take to make the converted
shed into a legal structure. The building
was so far from complying with the
building code that the only economically
feasible alternative was to tear it down.
Consequently, the seller had to lower his
price to refl ect the loss of the apartment
and the cost of demolition.
• Appraisers often want to know if signif-
icant renovations were done without
building permits. One couple found this
to be the case when they sold their home
in the Oakland hills.
They had added a bedroom, a bath
and a family room without permits. The
addition doubled the square footage of
the house. Without permits, the apprais-
er wasn’t willing to give full value for the
improvements, so the property appraised
for signifi cantly less than the purchase
price.
To keep the sale from falling apart, the
sellers took out permits, which involved
paying penalties. For the city inspector
to confirm that the work was done
properly, some walls had to be opened
to expose plumbing and electrical work.
The sellers’ efforts to save money by
bypassing the permit process ended up
costing them much more in the long run.
Best to Come Clean
Coming clean with the building depart-
ment is not as costly and onerous as you
might expect. Typically, the permit fee may
be doubled, possibly a little extra to con-
stitute a penalty. You may also incur some
cost should the building department require
that walls be opened up to complete their
inspection.
Most likely, these costs are apt to be far
less than a reduced sales price to placate
your buyer or litigation and settlement costs
should you be served with a post-escrow
lawsuit.
Sparks - Altadena Rotary Club Newsletter6
CERTIFICATE FOR EXAMINATION
AND X-RAYS
CERTIFICATE FOR EXAMINATION
AND X-RAYS
DOCTORS WITH A HEART
FEB. 14 – MARCH 14, 2018
140 North Hill AvenuePasadena, CA 91106(626) 792-3390www.drbud.com
Michael N. Budincich, D.C.Tom Surnock, D.C.Polin Togi, LAc
140 North Hill AvenuePasadena, CA 91106(626) 792-3390www.drbud.com
Michael N. Budincich, D.C.Tom Surnock, D.C.Polin Togi, LAc
This gift certificate is good for a Complete Chiropractic or Acupuncture Examination, including examination of the spine, posture, muscles, joints, nerves, and even spinal x-rays
if they are needed.
This offer is for new patients only and expires on March 14, 2018.
This gift certificate is good for a Complete Chiropractic or Acupuncture Examination, including examination of the spine, posture, muscles, joints, nerves, and even spinal x-rays
if they are needed.
This offer is for new patients only and expires on March 14, 2018.
Name Name
Referred by Referred by
This certificate is void unless referred by a current patient. This certificate is void unless referred by a current patient.
Dear Patients and Friends,
Flowers and chocolates can express how much you
care for someone, but showing someone how much you
deeply care about their good health can speak volumes.
We have a program that can help with improving the
health of your family and friends.
Attached you will find two gift certificates for
family members or friends, good for a Free Complete
Chiropractic or Chinese Acupuncture Assessment
Examination and any needed X-rays, from February 14
through March 14, 2018. This includes examination of
the spine, posture, muscles, joints, nerves, or this may be
used for a complete new patient acupuncture/Chinese
medicine examination. This is a total of up to $250.00 of
services we will provide for each person you send us.
I am sure that you know of someone who would
appreciate the opportunity to take this step toward
better health. In fact, it could be the most important gift
anyone has ever given them.
So, why not give a gift certificate to someone
suffering to have the opportunity to find out that they
don’t have to live with pain anymore. I ask you one
favor, please don’t let this go to waste. These certificates
expire on March 14, 2018. The best gift you could
give for Valentine’s Day is the gift of good health. This
certificate is void without your name on them as the
referring patient.
Sincerely,
Michael N. Budincich, D.C.