Crete Rotary Club
Crete, Nebraska
"Service Above Self"
Busy, busy, busy!
Much of the meeting Wednesday evening was spent organizing all of the projects going on currently. We now have our printed Grocery Grab raffle tickets ready for sale by club members. This is our club's only fund-raising event for the year and the more we raise, the more we can invest in our projects here in Crete! Thanks to Amy Hausman and Crete News for the quick printing turnaround! Our goal is to sell more tickets than last year, and we need every member to sell at least two books. You can pick up tickets from Jim Johnson or Chris Wittstruck, or at the next meeting!
Our dictionaries have arrived, and we will be soon scheduling a day and time to deliver them to all 3rd graders in Crete and Dorchester. The money we raise from the Grocery Grab pays for the dictionaries! We will email out that info when we have it.
We have several members signed up to help at the Crete Pumpkin Festival coming up soon on October 8th. An updated signup sheet will be available at our next meeting on September 27th. A reminder that also on October 8th is the next Back Pack Program packing event at 5pm at the UCC church. Plan on attending both!
There is still plenty of time to donate to the "Raise For Rotary" Bike Ride event coming up in November. Crete Rotary member Karen Drevo is joining other riders at the event in Touson Arizona. It is designed to bring attention to, and raise funds for, Rotary's ongoing battle to eradicate Polio worldwide. The public, not just club members, are encouraged to donate! The link to donate is: https://raise.rotary.org/KAREN-DREVO/challenge4.
At our meeting last week, we welcomed Kylie Nicewonger, Crete’s Code Enforcement Officer and Chad Menagh, Sergeant of the Police Department (Kylie’s supervisor). The presentation was quite informative as Kylie shared the process of issuing notices to clean up a property in Crete. She normally gets notified through a letter or phone call of a nuisance property, then goes out to assess the situation and document it with pictures. She issues a 15-day letter to the resident to clean up the property. Normally the resident does comply or at least make an improvement in the property at that time, but it can be escalated to the city attorney if it is not deemed acceptable, no visible change has been made, or the resident is not responding to repeated attempts to contact. In an effort to ensure fairness to all residents, Kylie uses the codes out on the city website (accessible to the public) to deem what a “nuisance” is or other terms and definitions used in the violations.
She started at the city in August of 2022 and since then has done over 100 cases! More surprisingly, code enforcement isn’t her only role! In addition, she is animal control and helps the police department with non-hazardous calls such as parking complaints. Prior to having Kylie, there was a similar position with the city called the Community Service Officer, but the job duties were a little different than what Kylie does now. The role shifted to Code Enforcement Officer when she came on board. We thank Kylie and Chad for joining us and sharing more about this important role in Crete.
Tom Sorensen, Kylie Nicewonger and Sergeant Chad Menagh