Scott Swanson
With spruced-up landscaping, paid employees staffing the office and Visitors Center, and a general sense of optimism, the Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce is running at speed this summer.
The chamber has made a lot of changes in recent months. The just-concluded Sportsman’s Holiday, for instance, wasn’t organized by board members as it has been in recent years. In fact, they hardly did any of it.
That’s part of the plan for the reorganized chamber, said board chair Brandi Hawkins.
“The chamber has stepped back from directly putting on these events,” she said. “We’re forming cohesive relationships with committees that rely on community involvement and volunteers, but benefit from chamber backing in areas such as insurance and fiscal management.”
In other words, chamber members and volunteers are stepping up to handle the parades, the finance, the Sportsman’s Holiday Court, events such as the annual awards banquet and After Hours mixers, membership and just about everything else the chamber is involved in.
And if the volunteers aren’t in place yet to make these things happen, Hawkins and Sweet Home Economic Development Director Brian Hoffman, who has brought his past experiences in other communities to bear in counseling the board as it has worked through various problems and issues, say that’s the wave of the future.
Last August the chamber cut its hours and reverted largely to volunteer help to keep its Visitors Center open during the height of the tourist season. Hoffman took an active role in advising the board, based on his previous experience with other chambers, and a comprehensive policies and procedures manual, along with financial accountability guidelines that previously had been non-existent, were implemented.
The chamber office was staffed a few hours a day, mainly by Cherrie Carranza, who volunteered her time for more than a year.
Those moves have paid off, Hawkins and Hoffman say.
With help from the city, the Visitors Center is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Carranza resigned recently, but Visitors Center coordinator Sherri Pagliari and Heidi Saito are paid staff. Pagliari has previous experience in a much larger chamber in the Sacramento area, Hawkins said.
“She has a passion for tourism,” Hawkins said. “She’s very proactive. She knows who to reach out to, almost intuitively.”
Financial assistance from the city has been key to getting the Visitors Center operation back on its feet, she said.
“The city has decided to make the Visitors Center a priority, helping to fund the Visitors Center. This is a monetary partnership, but the support factor is more important than the money – just the fact that the city is willing to stand behind it.”
Hawkins said the Beautification Committee spent two days planting and redefining the flower beds and lawns outside the chamber.
“(Committee Chair) Alice Grovom came out personally and watered for an entire week to make sure everything was set,” she said. “She called Brian at Santiam Spray Service to come over and spray the entire area so we could put down bark dust. He did that as a donation.
“T2 Trucking, the Totmans, donated a truckload of bark dust. We’re seeing members who want to be involved and change things.”
The next step, Hawkins and Hoffman say, is to define what the community wants the chamber to become. A general meeting for members is being planned for the fall.
“It will take the community to create a vision for how Sweet Home views itself,” Hoffman said. “They need to define what tourism looks like for Sweet Home.”
Though membership is not yet what Hawkins and other board members want it to be, she said it is on the rise and the chamber is starting to generate some enthusiasm.
Key to that will be communicating with former members who may not have had positive experiences in the chamber.
“We want to repair the fractures,” Hawkins said. “I think as people see personal and philosophical changes, they are starting to respond to that. In time, as the community sees things happening and builds trust in the chamber, that trust will come full circle.”
Though Hawkins chairs the board and is a visible proponent of the chamber and its activities, she said decisions are made by the entire group – Andrew Allen, Brandi Pickett, Kim Palmer, Diane Gerson, Mike Hall, Don Gonzales, and Anita Hutchins.
“That’s why I call myself a facilitator,” she said. “The board makes all the decisions and, for the most part, implements everything.”
Two seats are vacant and Hawkins said board members are interested in hearing from prospective candidates,
Even more, she said, they want to hear from the community.
“We want transparency,” she said. “We want to know what members think of our ideas. Members need to be involved rather than peripheral.”
Her personal dream, she said, is “to have our motels so busy they have to expand. That’s the kind of environment we want to create.”
The public is invited to chamber board meetings the third Thursday of each month at 9 a.m. at the chamber office.
In September, the board plans to hold a meeting of the general membership to talk about goals for the organization and get feedback to prepare for such goals, Hawkins said.
“What we want to see happen and what we’re beginning to see happen is our members become more inclusive in the process and make more contributions to the community as a whole,” she said.
“We’re, rather than seeking members, really seeking relationship, with membership secondary to relationship that we have with various businesses. That’s going to be how we focus, which will be different. It’s a philosophy change.”