Ashland Optimist Bulletin October 31 2026
Breakfast (Nov. 7): Dana Cafourek, Letitia & Tabi DenHartog
Speaker: Micheal Dwyer- PTSD: Reasons & Recovery
We will host Bingo on Nov. 6th, which will include a $1,000 horse race, so we will need all hands on-deck. If you normally help on the first Friday, but won't be available, please let Barrett or me know.
Our next event will be the Veteran's Breakfast on Wednesday, Nov. 11th from 7:00-9:00 a.m. spearheaded by Leigh Kottwitz. If you haven't contacted her and are still interested in helping, contact her at leighkottwitz@gmail.com.
We enjoyed a delicious breakfast this morning from Bernie Bartel, Bev Steelman, and Rich Ward, which included Bernie's apple cake and plenty of fresh fruit. Because President Ernie Wren was helping with the Monster Dash 5K at the YMCA, vice-president Madeline Bloss (with help from her son, Henry) stepped up to lead the meeting this morning. program Our speaker this morning was State Representative, John Martin. He is also the owner of Pro Pumping & Hydrojetting, a small local business. He spoke about his three focuses:
1. Public safety- including the Blue Shield Grant program which helped the Ashland Police Force be able to do fingerprinting locally. John also talked about the legislation that was passed recently which works to eliminate minimum sentencing and allows juveniles to be fingerprinted for felony crimes so that they are in the system.
2. Infrastructure- John spoke about the work that MODOT has been doing to improve road safety across the state and the struggles they are encountering with finding workers. John commented that this is a struggle across the state because we have low unemployment
3. Education- The state constitution requires that 25% of general revenue must go to education. According to John, because of the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money that was provided by the Federal Government after Covid over the past five years, school budgets have grown by 50%, while state revenue has only grown by 40%. Because of this, last year's budget called for level funding, which involves no cuts or increases. John also shared that he has sponsored an Elementary Ag education bill, which will help other schools to provide programs like our Learning Garden. John also talked about college funding changing to a performance-based model, which will take retention and graduation numbers into account for funding.
His goals if he is reelected include fighting waste and fraud through the Attorney General's office. John sponsored a bill to help the Auditor's office focus on specific areas of departments instead of requiring them to audit the entire department, which should save money. John also talked about the need to balance property tax between personal, commercial, and home taxes by averaging the three so none of them increases more than the others.
At that point, John asked for questions and shared his responses, before he helped Henry draw for the Attendance Drawing. Greg Hawkins, Jim Green, and Doyle Welker had their chance at riches, but with their absence, the pot will have a chance to regrow. Because of weeks without breakfast meetings, Barrett had seven weeks' worth of cards to figure for the Poker Pot. Even though there were several people with pairs, Ken Bishop won with pairs of jacks and eights.
This evening, we held our annual Optimist Spooktacular, with fifteen folks decorating their trunks to hand out over five hundred treats. Check in a future Boone County Journal for many of the incredible costumes and go to the Ashland Optimist Club Facebook page to see the winners in the trunk competition.
Letitia DenHartog
ashlandoptimist.org
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