Valleyview Chamber of Commerce Back in Operation

The Valleyview & District Chamber of Commerce held its Annual General Meeting earlier this week.

With a new executive now in place, it’s back up and running after most of the previous executive suddenly stepped down in July of 2017, causing the Chamber to go dormant.

Stephanie Clough, the President of the Valleyview & District Chamber of Commerce. (Photo/Facebook)

Newly-elected Chamber President Stephanie Clough explained to the Trending 55 Newsroom exactly what happened.

“A lot of our board, including our President, Vice-President and Treasurer, were all relocated out of town due to their careers,” said Clough. “So, we didn’t have the act of membership at that time to move forward to continue as a board.”

But, with the AGM concluded, the Valleyview Chamber does have the act of membership.

“We saw a lot of new faces show up at the meeting,” she said. “Many of them, we had not even seen before within the community.”

When the chamber went dormant, there were fears within the community that items like the Santa Clause Parade and the Moonlight Madness Shopping event would be cancelled this year.

But now, Clough says that both will now proceed.

“We are moving forward with (both events) on November 30,” said Clough. “We’re very optimistic about it. There was good responses, and lots of feedback from people who said they’d miss those things, and we’re very happy now to be bringing them back.”

As for introducing something new to each event, Clough says it won’t be happening this year.

“We don’t have a tonne of time, being that it’s just a couple of weeks away,” she said. “So, we want to go into things that we know and can execute properly, so that we’re not spreading ourselves too thin and doing a just a half-job on anything.

“But we are hopeful that we can go in next year and build those things back up,” Clough continued. “Because we have so many new faces on our board and our executive, we don’t want to be overwhelming.”

Of the 10 members of the Board of Directors, just three are returning. They include Clough herself, Treasurer Kristie McCrossan, and Director-at-Large Ken Wittig.

Clough says the next step is revamping and restructuring the organization within the Chamber itself.

“We’re going to hire a new Executive Assistant,” said Clough. “We’re also looking forward to more business networking and local community shopping support for the businesses. Pretty much, we’re going to start small, by cutting back from spreading ourselves out too thin. We’ll do our things, like late-night shopping in the winter and our fair in the summer, and concentrate on networking and advertising.”

She adds that they intend to get their website back up and running, get their social media updated, and find a new permanent office location.

Valleyview & District Chamber of Commerce – Executive:

*Indicates Returning Member.

– Posted by BET