Our guest speaker this morning was Major General Gregory Knight, US Army, the Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard.Major General Greg Knight of the Vermont National Guard is our guest today.
Carrie called the meeting to order at 7:30 am.
Carrie welcomed Sophie Slonka as our new chef!!
Carrie welcomed all our guests: Bud Ockert, Adjutant General Greg Knight, Annette Labombard, Judy Rosentrake, Colleen Haag, Paul Goodrich, Hank Harder, Peter Gadhue.
Tomorrow night is the public social event at The Public House in Hinesburg.
The Christmas social will be at Jim Donovan’s house and catered by Sophie.
This saturday is the District. event at Northern Vermont University, several officers are attending.
Carrie acknowledged Amanda and her work on our social media platforms, including the first CSH Rotary Spotlight on Richard Fox.
Carol showed a short video on the Rotary International Foundation to promote the foundations giving month of November. Let Carol know if you give online.
Denis collected the happy fines.
Adjutant General Gregory Knight introduced himself as a thirty nine year veteran of the armed forces. He is an elected official.
The mission of the Vermont National Guard is to serve the citizens of Vermont and the Governor.
Adjutant Knight shared recent missions of the The National Guard:
Built the temporary Covid 19 facility at the Essex Fairgrounds at the onset of the pandemic for $325,000. They also distributed vaccines and delivered meals.
Now certified with the government for the F35’s. Within ninety days of that certification, they were deployed to the European Command to support their allies in supporting Kosovo. They are also deployable to Southwest Asia and Africa.
The Guard will be building two new facilities, one in Bennington for operations and at $7,000,000 and a Family and Veteran Center.
In September, the Guard hosted the first ever open house at the National Guard where they had 6,000 people come to the facility. His goal is to have total transparency to Vermont’s government and the people which it serves.
The Guard established a partnerhip with North Macedonia to provide military assitance and training to help them meet NATO standards. This partnership is a very big deal for the Stateo of Vermont’s outstanding Guard operations. They also have a partnership with the republic of Austria, again, very significant for our small state.
The Vermont National Guard has a $200,000,000 budget but with this budget comes his his biggest obstacle: recruitment. The benefits are very robust and need to be emphasized due to the severe lack of recruits in the United States and he works hard in Washington to work on solid goals to recruit Americans to serve.
More information can be found on their website: www.vt.public.ng.mil
Dan presented Adjutant General Knight with three books, one to each library.
“H Is For Honor” by Devin Scillian to be donated to the Hinesburg Carpenter Carse Library.
“I’ll Lend You My Daddy” by Becky King to be donated to the Shelburne Pierson Library.
“American Dream Team” by Courtney Petruzzelli and Melissa B.Snyder will be donated to the Charlotte Library.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:30