Our speaker was Rick Roenbeck, UC Grad and admin person in charge of the environment
at Golden Gate Fields in Albany. This was an interesting presentation on this large local business, which is home for 1200 horses during the racing season. Those horses need to be taken care of, so there are thousands of people working there- but only a few of the (10%) are GGF employees. The race track considers itself an entertainment venue as well as an agricultural site. It has been in operation since 1941 (time out for World War II) and is always open. They are very serious about their location on the Bay, and nothing is permitted to flow into it. No waste, no run-off from giving Dobbin his bath, nothing. They recycle just about everything, including the straw used in the stables and all the other by-products one would associate with stables.

Thank you Rick and Mike LaFranco for an interesting program.

Submitted by Todd Armstrong

Our speaker this week was Noah Alpert, the founder of Noah’s Bagels and now an author and business consultant. Noah has led an interesting life, creating six businesses (four successful) and picking up significant wisdom in the process.

After an exciting career at the University of Wisconsin, he started his first company, the Alper Wooden Bowl Company.

From buy diet pills this humble (and successful) beginning he went on to found the immensely successful Noah’s Bagels, which spread stores up and down the West Coast. He eventually sold this business and wrote the book “Business Mensch”, and is

now living happily ever after, writing, traveling and spreading the word that “Doing good is good for business”.

Thank you Noah for a great talk!

Submitted by Todd Armstrong

Our speaker was Tony Wolcott, Arborist for the City of Albany. Who knew Albany had so many different types of trees? Well, Tony knew, that’s who. He knows the good ones from the villains, and he was all over the massive tree branch that destroyed a car down the street from my house. He gave a very interesting talk on trees and city tree policy. Thanks to Carol O’Keefe for asking him to come and speak to us. Submitted by Todd Armstrong

The 7/13 meeting featured Emilie Raguso, who heads the website called Albany.Patch.com . This is a site that acts as a community bulletin board; seems to me to fill the role of a local newspaper (of which there aren’t any any more). Emilie is a paid employee of AOL and is in charge of the site, updating material, etc. Submitted by Todd Armstrong

On 7/6/2010 Maha Ibrahim, Sr. Field Rep for Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, gave us insights into the legislative process- of course, she could only talk about process, and not policy. The policy questions would have to be referred higher. She spends most of her time in the field- the Capitol office is not her preference. She said many staffers are young, over-worked and underpaid. She recommended that we be polite when dealing with them. Submitted by Todd Armstrong