July 8, 2021 to August 26, 2021 - Memorial Hall Basement
Topic - "Summer Roundtables"
The summer roundtable meetings will begin on July 8, 2021 in the basement meeting room of Memorial Hall. For the new members and to remind old members, Rockford Rotary traditionally takes July and August off in keeping with the tradition that started when the club was started in 1916. This exception to the Rotary rules was granted by Paul Harris as one of the conditions for starting a Rotary club in Rockford. The charter members insisted on having July and August off so that they could continue to play baseball and enjoy boating.
In 1989, Kent Mallquist was a delegate to the Council on Legislation in Singapore. He spoke and voted to maintain our pre 1922 constitution and bylaws which ensured our right to maintain our oddities like no summer meetings. Thanks to Kent and the others, we were able to "legally" not have summer meetings.
This continued until July of 2017 when the Board voted to have regular meetings on trial basis to see how they worked out. It is important to remember that this was a trial basis and not a change to our bylaws. If we have changed out bylaws to have regular meetings, we would not be able to change and go back to no summer meetings. One of the conditions for our exemption was that as long as we did not change our bylaws, we would continue to have the original exemption. However, if we changed our bylaws to have regular meetings all year round, we would not be allowed to go back.
President Hannah and the Board will discuss the format of the summer roundtables and that information will be given to the membership via e-mail since we will not be publishing a COG during July and August.