As we transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas, we are in the middle of the holiday season, a wonderful time of the year. This is a great time of the year for family and community, so enjoy it. Our Rotary schedule gets lighter with only two noon meetings this month. We will get to hear from our District Governor and learn about the history of the Salvation Army.

I recently finished a great book called "Inspired Public Service" by Steve Wright. One of those books that if I hadn't known the author I probably wouldn't have read. The author was the Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration for the first 13 years of this century. The book contains a lot of great principles with one of the themes being that public service is harder than private industry, as private industry success is based on being financially successful. While public service has more objectives and they are harder to define because “non-for-profits exist primarily to create a better life for the public than would occur in their absence".

Steve does provide three public sector values: trustworthiness, operational excellence, and stewardship. A little different than "to provide humanitarian service, promote peace, and advance goodwill globally through a fellowship of business and professional leaders" but with a lot of overlap.

Another theme of the book is that the measure of public service is the satisfaction of the stakeholders. With full acknowledgement that every group has many stakeholders and measuring satisfaction can be difficult.

Therefore, as we go through this holiday season and while we unite for good let’s enjoy the community of others. Let’s also look outward and see how we as Rotarians will be able to make life better for the public, provide trustworthy excellent responsible service, and enhance the satisfaction of our community in the coming year

In Fellowship,

Stephen Boorman, President

Rotary Club of Idaho Falls