June 8th: Jack Clasen and Ed Rhinehart, America In Bloom Contest 

What is America in Bloom?

America in Bloom is...

A quality of life improvement program

• a great concept that can help develop both beautification and economic improvement
• a grassroots program that believes that connecting people and plants is important to everyone's quality of life
• the propagation of the love of plants and their interaction with our communities
• enhancing cities to make them better places to live
• a program that promotes community health by using horticulture
• a program that builds pride of place for communities and enhances awareness of different facets of the community

A Community improvement program

• an opportunity to make a community more appealing through community involvement
• a challenging experience, but worth the effort to see a cocoon become a butterfly
• a nation wide program that brings a community together to beautify inside and out
• a unique and informative creative concept to highlight your community and improve overall involvement of the neighborhoods
• a wonderful shot in our community's arm; through it we are reborn
• a community effort to beautify and improve your town by getting the residents involved
• an opportunity for communities to identify and build their image
• amazing as it provide the process to get cities and towns moving and working together to improve their communities

A civic pride and community involvement program

• an organization to promote pride in cities
• a beautification program for each community that nurtures volunteerism
• a way to pull together volunteers to impact the community
• about bringing people together to make our city better
• a community building and enhancement program
• a community beautification organization that promotes civic pride
• a community effort to showcase pride in the community through plants, flowers, trees
• community beautification
• a contagious awakening of community pride
• a method for involving the total community in planting pride in our communities
• a community improvement and beautification contest

An educational and community engagement program

• a very educational program that makes our communities more award of how beautiful we can make our communities by working together
• a teaching experience to educate rather than criticize
• an incredibly motivating organization that serves as a catalyst for building community pride and participation
• an organization that promotes community pride, passion and education

A source of inspiration

• inspiring and encouraging
• a facilitator of community involvement and inspiration for change and improvement

A catalyst

• a great resource and motivator to improve our city's public image as well as sales revenue for downtown businesses
• motivating and inspiring 
• rewarding
• a municipal and volunteer self improvement program that brings the community together
• a vehicle to coordinate community improvement
• the contest is a catalyst for action on a continuing basis

A friendly competition

• disguised as a friendly competition, but serves our community as a unifier for the various non profits, corporations, private citizens for a common goal
• a contest that can be used to generate enthusiasm and education for community wide improvement projects

A valuable tool

• comprehensive inexpensive survey of a city
• a powerful community building tool
• a program that gives us an annual list of potential problems to address from the judges' visit 

June 1st: Will James and Allison Helsley

Yes had Vocation Speeches last week! Will is an insurance agent and he spoke to us about a unique policy we can get that fits any budget, that you can even buy for a new born for as little as $25 per month that can grow to $1,000,000 face value and includes long term care insurance (important one you get older, but much to expensive to get once you realize you need it!). Be sure to talk to Will for all your insurance needs!

Allison works for JetPay, a payment processing business. JetPay is interesting in that they do the processing and authorization. There pricing is amazing because they handle both sides of the transaction.

They are a small company, with very large clients and until know have been selling through brokers. Allison was hired as their first direct sales person and is setting up their in house sales team! JetPay has great service and their niche is e-commerce processing, so if your business runs on the internet, you need to talk to Allison!