July 13th the Wagner Rotary started a new year. Our calendar year runs from July 1st to June 30th. There were two fresh faces at the head table to greet us. Rachel Woods is the new President and Jordan Weber is the new Sergeant at Arms. Rotarian Craig Krsnak will continue as our club Secretary/Treasurer.

President Woods passed out the new assignment sheets for Attendance Teams, Programs, Meal Runners, and Committee Assignments. No one volunteered to oversee a LD float so the Rotary will not be participating in the Labor Day Parade in the future.

Rotarian Pastor Bill Heermann offered a prayer of thanksgiving for the food and the hands that prepared it and asked for protection from the heat that we are currently experiencing.

Song leader Jeff Doom led the club in singing Happy Birthday for the July Birthdays which were Jerry Weber, Bill Frei, and Joe Stedronsky.

Rotarian Ken Cotton gave our Membership Minute. He spoke about Rotary Matching Grants. This was significant to the Club as members just purchased and planted bushes and perennials at our Rotary Park Shelter at Wagner Lake last Wednesday. Matching Grants are not approved to purchase land or build buildings and they may not be used for programs already underway or completed. Personal participation by Rotarians is required and the benefits should extend beyond the recipients.

The Matching Grants program is an incredibly significant part of The Rotary Foundation and provides an important incentive for clubs to undertake worthwhile international service projects in another part of the world. They certainly foster goodwill and understanding, which is in keeping with the objectives of The Rotary Foundation. Rotarian Cotton mentioned that perhaps our Wagner Rotary can help with an overseas project someday.

The new Sergeant at Arms Jordan Weber did an excellent job with his first week of assessing fines. With a big grin on his face he promptly fined: $3 to Bryan Slaba for a phone infraction last week, $3 to his father Jerry Weber just because he can now; $5 to every Rotarian who did not show up last Wednesday to help with the planting; $4 to Bill Frei for being in the newspaper twice, for this being his last year in 4H and bringing the post hole digger last week; $2 to Jeff Doom for the two holes he dug; $3 to Rachel Woods for missing a meal; $3 each to Jerry and Jeff; they simply cannot sit together at the same table; $1 to Amanda Bechen for stepping on the water hose last week and cutting off the water supply; Happy Fines came from Joe Stedronsky of $9.40 for his 94th Birthday; $3 from Jamie Soukup because his wife returned from a week long convention and he is no longer the only parent. Guest Ron Kafka drew the lucky ticket number and there was a moment of silence while he drew from a deck of only fifteen cards left! A sigh of relief was heard when he showed the Jack of Clubs. Fourteen more cards to go!

Secretary Craig Krsnak reported that the new attendance teams of Jordon Weber and Jamie Soukup show Weber with four misses and Soukup with only two misses. He informed a disappointed Ron Kafka that he had missed his share of $654.00! Krsnak also informed the club that our last quarterly statements will be passed out next week.

President Woods announced that our next week’s meeting will be our steak meeting and there will be no program. We will have a business meeting to discuss our coming Rotary year and will have an official Induction of Officers.

Rotarian Bill Frei introduced his two guests who were his program. Ron Kafka and Linda Kocmich from Titan Machinery. Ron is the Store Equipment Manager and Linda is the Store Administrator. Titan Machinery purchased Marks Machinery recently but is not tied to the Yankton store. The purchase took place on April first. All the employees were kept. The only substantial change was the name.

There are seventy-six stores with Titan, and Titan Machinery has also just bought twelve more new stores in the Heartland. Titan has thirty stores in Europe, sixteen of which are in the Ukraine.

Kocmich stated that Mark Hunhoff is almost retired. The East lot at the store location contains all the older machinery that Titan declined to purchase. Mark plans to have an auction on that lot in the future, as well as the older used items at the Yankton location.

The new ownership has been exceptionally good to the employees. They have an excellent benefit package for employees. Linda worked for Marks Machinery for six years and Ron had worked for three years. The biggest challenge for them was the change to an all-computer system. All seventy-six stores are connected through the internet. Wagner’s store is in the central part of a total of seven regions and is overseen by David W Davis of the Brandon, South Dakota store.

Ron stated that the new system is working well but requires a person to stay connected on the internet. There is access to all equipment in all seventy-six stores. If a customer wants to purchase a certain item with certain requirements and Ron finds the item online there is only a forty-eight hour hold on that item. A farmer must make up his mind quickly. There are also a lot of email enquiries to keep up with as all stores are searching for a special item at any time.

When asked about what they need to acquire personnel wise, Ron stated “two more mechanics.” Two long time employees struck out on their own recently. Chad Beeson started up his own business at Avon and Tyler Koupal went to farming full time.

The meeting adjourned with the recitation of our 4-Way Test.