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Discover the heartbeat of Juneau's cultural and community landscape with 'Capital Chat.' This series explores the vibrant world of the community, arts, and dynamic cultural and social events happening in Alaska's Capital City. Tune in to 'Capital Chat' for your essential guide to the pulse of our community, where every story is an adventure and every voice matters.
Joining me from the Juno Chamber of Commerce is Rebecca Parks. Becca, good to see you again.
Speaker 2:It's nice to be back.
Speaker 1:And congratulations on the chamber dinner. What a fantastic, fantastic night.
Speaker 2:Well, and congratulations to you again. It was so fun to honor all all of our awardees, and to honor you and Lisa with our our citizen of the year.
Speaker 1:That was that was, I'm still shocked. Yeah. And and what a thrill. What a thrill. So some big changes coming up with the board.
Speaker 1:Do you wanna talk about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I... Let's not big changes, but our annual changes, which we're really excited about. I mean, just so grateful for people that put in the time. I watched the assembly turnover last night and thought, hey. Same thing's happening for us.
Speaker 2:Sure. So we, said goodbye. Very long service of Ben Brown on the chamber board and so grateful for the time that he's put in, in leading the chamber through some pretty serious transitions Yeah. In his year of presidency. Ray Thibodeau, who especially this year with the gala, it just...
Speaker 2:You know, people just show up in great ways, and he's been great to have on the board and having that AML presence and, just the extra knowledge in networking through all of the shipping and fuel issues that have come up over the last, year. And then Sarah Race who left the board a little bit early, and moved up to Anchorage, but still managed to finish out her term and works for the Gartner group and, you know, really brought some great insight about organization and how it could work. So grateful to all of them, but then also really excited to welcome on three new board members. So we have Sarah Crook from, New Vision. We have, Bill Human who just brings such a large amount of expertise from his time in Juneau and, time working in development and construction.
Speaker 2:And, then... Oh my goodness, Kelly Moore from AML who's gonna hopefully fill some of that, information that Ray has been providing us with on the board.
Speaker 1:The depth of the board is so impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You people from all kinds of different, industries here bringing that, that wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It really does feel like a great roundtable when we get together and can talk about issues, lots of different opinions, and just representing different industries, different sized businesses, different political views. It all comes into the room, and, I think the discussions and the, comments that we come out with afterwards are really valuable because of that.
Speaker 1:So let's let's talk about that for folks that that don't know or new businesses that are starting up the importance of becoming a member of the chamber and what that does for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I, it's amazing. I've been in this position as executive director for just over a year and have learned and appreciate so much the advocacy work that the chamber does because of, bringing together the group of opinions from the board. So we speak on behalf of the board, But then being able to go out and talk to members, watching all of the assembly meetings and the planning commission meetings, and taking all of that information back. We try to communicate it back out to members in multiple ways.
Speaker 2:So we send out an advocacy email every Friday. We have our luncheons every Thursday, and then being able to talk directly to our city government, about what the business community needs to be successful in town. And it's not always a, you know, simple concise message. The business community is incredibly diverse, but we can have conversations about it. You know, it's not just here's what we need, and and we need it now.
Speaker 2:It really is a developing relationship and and working on those issues.
Speaker 1:You you mentioned the, the weekly luncheons. What about the upcoming schedule?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We have our last in our series of candidate forums this Thursday. I know many people have already voted, but even if you have, it's a great chance to just know the candidates before they get into office. So we'll have house district three, Andy Story, and Annette Kreitzer, in... On this Thursday at the Moose Lodge.
Speaker 2:The program runs twelve to one. We keep it really tight within the lunch hour. You can register for that on our website, junochamber.com. The following week, we're doing a little spotlight on holiday marketing. The DBA is gonna be there and talk about first Friday and holiday lights.
Speaker 2:And, we'll just kind of... That one's meant to be an extended roundtable, really focused on networking and people sharing their own ideas, what's going on for their business, and making sure we keep that business up as we enter into this season. And then after that, we have health care updates. So we're gonna have both search and Bartlett at, over at the Moose Lodge again to talk about what's going on for them and things we can look... You know, things we should be aware of in the health care industry.
Speaker 1:And you have a member survey coming up too. Right?
Speaker 2:We do. It's that time of year. Our board has our retreat where we'll start looking at our priorities. We'll kinda get a refresh on our committees. And so we wanna hear from as many members as possible.
Speaker 2:So we are going to launch that on Thursday with our luncheon. And this is kind of my my formal outreach. I hope that the radio responds to it, and that anybody else out there is listening. We will take responses from both members and nonmembers. We wanna hear what you wanna see from the chamber, but then also just what our businesses need.
Speaker 2:It's hard to get out and talk to every single one of our members, and this gives us a chance to just, reach out in a different way.
Speaker 1:So... Which is the purpose of of of chamber. And what have you learned, I guess, over the last year and maybe leading into this survey, of some of the challenges local businesses are having right now?
Speaker 2:You know, I I do think there's fear in the visitor industry of changes in that, and people really want to know, appreciate it having numbers ahead of time Mhmm. And and appreciate the relationship with the cruise lines with that MOU, knowing how many visitors they can expect. I think that, people really value city services and parks and rec, and we heard really differing views on how those should be supported. But, I mean, unanimous support for... We need these things to keep employees here and to have a vibrant workforce.
Speaker 2:So knowing that we're gonna be able to keep our pools open, keep, Eagle Crest open
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And have those resources for employees. And, you know, I really am hearing, and this is joint work with DBA about downtown safety and and that being a concern for our businesses downtown. And then there's the larger economy. You know? People are struggling with tariffs.
Speaker 2:People are struggling with inflation and just the the cost of doing business these days.
Speaker 1:Where can we send folks to find out more information about the chamber? And if they're not, how to become a member.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You can, go to our website, junochamber.com. You can visit our office. We're out in Vintage Park, 3030 Vintage Boulevard, Suite 100. Right now, it's still a mess from the gala, but we're getting there.
Speaker 2:You can always give our office a call, 907, 0, 463-3488. And, I would really highly recommend just coming out to one of those luncheons. Yeah. If if you're not sure, give our office a call. We'll we'll get you fit to the right one, but come meet the board, see what other members are there, and really take advantage of those learning opportunities.
Speaker 2:We try to fill them with, leaders from the community and give people a chance to to really take something away.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Thanks for coming in today.
Speaker 2:Thank you.