By the time you read this newsletter the Thanksgiving Weekend is gone and most of us are feeling a little bit sleepy and the election that ended like a reality TV show is over. I can honestly say that I went to bed Tuesday night not having watched one minute let alone 5 seconds of the TV or internet coverage of the 2016 Presidential election. I was totally surprised in the morning when my wife said Trump was our new President-Elect. I didn’t believe her and had a look for myself. I will admit I didn’t see that coming and I’m still waiting for somebody to say “don’t count that”. That’s one of my most common sayings when I’m playing golf with friends, we all need a redo on the golf course from time to time. It will be interesting to watch a business minded person and not a career politician as President. Time will tell how well he works with the career politicians in Congress and the Senate, so far certain parts of the business world seem to be encouraged.
Two of the local transportation ballot measures that could have an impact for a majority of our chapter membership were defeated. After looking at some of the results for these two measures I was
somewhat disappointed. Sacramento County’s Measure B failed 65.1% to 34.9% and Placer County’s Measure M failed 63.8% to 36.2%, both needed a 2/3 approval to pass. It was interesting looking at the Sacramento County results by precinct and most of the precinct’s out of the core of downtown Sacramento had between 50% & 60% approval whereas the downtown core precinct’s exceeded 70% approval. The suburbs might have benefited the most with the influx of new or expanded transportation projects.
The elections are over and it’s time to move on with normal life again. At the November meeting we had a little presentation from “Citrus Circuits First Robotics Team 1678” from Davis. They wanted to show us their design from last year’s competition robot, and to personally thank our Chapter for making a donation last year. Not only are they trying to compete and win the regional competitions, they are learning the value of team work and assisted in the launch of the new First Robotics Team at High Schools in Winters and Woodland. The Team has also created 23 “First Lego League” teams for elementary and junior high school students. These young people will help lead our country into the future and I believe we’ll be in good hands as we grow more mature and maybe retire. Some of us will work until we’re dragged out screaming and kicking (or on a stretcher) because we enjoy working so much or we haven’t anything else to do.
Our next Chapter meeting will be our annual joint meeting with APWA on January 6, 2017. Please note that with the closing of the Red Lion Woodlake Inn, the January meeting will be held at the Dante Club. The featured speaker will be Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. This event should be well attended so I would advise you to make your reservations soon.
Our chapter board meeting will be prior to the lunch meeting with APWA. The next major event after the upcoming joint meeting will be the ACEC California 2017 Engineering Excellence Awards which benefits the ACEC California Scholarship Foundation on February 2, 2017. The dinner and Honor Awards will take place at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. I hope to see everybody in January at the APWA/ACEC Joint Meeting to start off 2017 with a wonderful event.
Cheers!
