President Becky Brunsing called the Wagner Rotary Club to order on Wednesday, August 30th with a full house present. There were several guests present, one of which President Brunsing had invited. She introduced Debra Houseman of Lake Andes, South Dakota as her guest. Deb is the new City Administrator for the City of Wagner.

The meeting agenda was full, so President Brunsing urged members to be brief in order to cover all the items for the noon meeting. Song Leader Gerrit Juffer lead the group in singing “Red River Valley” which the group managed to sing quite well to everyone’s surprise, since Gerrit had not brought his usual Bluetooth or phone.

Membership Minute Chairman Ken Cotton spoke about one of the benefits of being a Rotary member. There are approximately 1.2 million Rotary club members, or Rotarians, and more than 200,000 Rotaract club members or Retractors, around the world. As a member, you have far greater potential to do good in your community than you did before you joined. You’ll have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others by contributing your expertise, skills, and talents as well as the privilege of working with other professionals and community leaders. Regular attendance is essential to a strong and active Rotary club. Many Rotarians take great pride in maintaining their 100 percent record in their own club or by making up at other Rotary Club meetings. Another avenue for attendance is to utilize the E-makeup for meetings which is found on the internet.

Sergeant at Arms Jamie Soukup kept the fines to a minimum in order to hasten the business of the day. Fines levied were: $2 to Jordan Weber for being late for football practice; $2 each to Jeff Doom and Amanda Bechen for being 12 minutes late and arriving together; $2 to Jerry Weber for being on the “Cow Guy” as seen on RFD TV; $2 to Jerry Henke for wasting pepper; $2 to Gerrit Juffer for his speaker; $2 to Becky Brunsing and Linda Soukup for talking too much. A Happy Fine came from President Brunsing on the great performance of her daughter, Abby in the DWU volleyball game against Dakota State College.

Jamie asked one of the guests to select a ticket and it was Joe Stedronsky’s lucky ticket number. However, Joe only drew the King of Clubs from the deck of cards and was out $94.00.

Secretary/Treasurer Craig Krsnak reported that the attendance teams are pulling apart. Gerrit Juffer’s team has eight misses and Bill Frei’s team has five misses. There is only one more month left in our first quarter of the 2023-24 Rotary year.

Krsnak asked that all the football books be returned next Wednesday, September 6th. There are a few books left if anyone wants to sell or buy another football book.

Discussion then centered around the visit from the Australian Rotarians on September 14th. There will be no regular meeting on our scheduled Wednesday meeting of September 13th. We will convene on Thursday to escort the Australians around the community and will eventually be at the Choteau Creek Brewery for supper in the evening of the 14th. Details will be finalized at our meeting next Wednesday. Rotarians Bill Frei and Becky Brunsing traded programs for the following week as Frei is Assistant District Governor for our #5610 District and will be responsible for the Australian Exchange group.

At this point four guests arrived courtesy of Amanda Bechen. She noticed these individuals doing some filming on Main Street and approached them and invited them to our Rotary meeting. They were from South Dakota Public Broadcasting which you may have watched in the past. They were doing a feature on the City of Wagner that will be broadcast in the future. Larry Rohr oversees the programming and hosts the broadcast; Paul Ebsen oversees the production work, and his father Steve Ebsen accompanied them on this trip.

Rotarian Craig Krsnak introduced his program which was Kristina Monroe, the District Park Supervisor for South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks in the Ft. Randall District. She introduced Lance Powell who is the present Park Manager and the two work very hard at maintaining the park system at Pickstown/Ft. Randall Dam.

Kristina gave an update of what happened last year and this past summer at Randall Creek. She spoke of the challenges that the new bridge construction had presented the past summer months. It created another 42,842 miles of extra driving for her and her workers. It was a very expensive delay. The bridge is now finally open for traffic. Her planned projects for the winter were not realized due to the large amount of snow that was received. They spent a lot of time moving snow. Her Park Manager Lance Powell works at Snake Creek as he is a resident of the Platte area. He was introduced to the Rotarians, and he gave a brief bio of his time up until now.

Monroe said they did have quite a bit of success in finishing projects this past summer. They finished several trails, putting asphalt on some and concrete on a waterfront, gave twenty seven educational programs to some two hundred guests; participated in Wagner Summer School with one hundred kids; partnered with the Corp of Engineers to finish the trail at the spillway, hosted two national fishing tournaments, partnered with the Game, Fish and Parks fisheries at the Fairfax Lake and gave a fishing clinic at the Boys and Girls Club in Wagner to just name a few. Kristina also was happy to report that they have finished planting eleven acres of trees in the fire recovery area.

Camping went well in almost all the camp areas: The overnight campers numbered 14,305 which was down only two percent. North point averaged 86,384 overnight campers and was down three percent; Randall Creek had 4,8873 and was up nine percent. She said there was an increase in tent campers which was a little surprising. Vehicles in recreational areas in the park were down 19%, North Point had 55,000 and down 30%, Randall Creek was also down 22% and North Wheeler was up 33% probably due to their proximity to the Platte area. There was a total of 61% occupancy throughout the year which Monroe was very satisfied with.

She is hoping to do more work on the burned acres in the Francis area and hopes to install some pollinators; replace seven cabins at North Point, and partner with the Corp of Engineers in a Halloween event at or before sunset on Halloween. They had a great Christmas event planned last year but it unfortunately snowed out. She hopes to restore the archery trail and needs volunteers for this project. If you volunteer, you will receive a free parking space for the coming year!

The meeting adjourned with our usual recitation of the Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, or do.