With all that’s going on or not going on, we at the chamber want you to know that we are still working on projects we hope will contribute to some sort of normalcy for the foreseeable future.
The Chamber Executive Committee met on May 6th and addressed the following agenda:
We will be discussing this week with the Springvale Library how we can save a part of the summer Music on the Patio series that was supposed to start June 19 – Sept 4. Maybe start in July or August with best practices for safety in place. We were also going to celebrate the Maine Bicentennial on July 24 with a whole afternoon of music so maybe we can move that to early fall. If your business still wants to sponsor a musician we could use your help. The cost is $100 each week we have music.
We are considering hosting a real drive-in movie night or two. We have a pretty big screen we purchased several years ago that might just be perfect for this. Plenty of details to work out but working with our International Film Fest group and others we just might have something there.
The Chamber Golf Tournament is scheduled for August 14 at Province Lake. I do know the course is practicing social distancing and other safety measures now and I will be contacting them soon to discuss our tournament. Maybe change it to a later date or not. In any case, we will be contacting you to get your thoughts on participating as a player or sponsor as we move forward.
Same goes for our very popular Pine Hollow Par Three outing. We will be working with them to see if we can still have an event sometime this summer.
As you know our Chamber Annual Meeting was canceled in March. We still want to have this event so think fall.
The Harvest Festival Committee has decided to cancel their event for September and focus on next year. A real bummer, but because of the potential crowd gathering for this fun event we thought it wise to give it a rest.
On a good note, the Chamber Scholarship Committee will be awarding two $1000 student scholarships ( thank you chamber golf tournament & holiday raffle) to students attending the Academy of Business which accepts students from the region to SHS. The winners are Anna Mahoney from South Portland who will be studying precision machining & manufacturing at either YCCC or SMCC, and Hanna O’Neal from Lebanon studying Business Administration/Finance/Management and has been accepted at several colleges.
For those of you that renewed your chamber membership in the past several weeks, we thank you very much because we know how difficult it is right now to balance everything on your plate. We are doing our best to be supportive during these times and want you to know your chamber is working for you.
Keep an eye out for the new chamber website, which will be launched in two phases. It’s looking good.
Rick Stanley, Chamber President
PS: I know this letter is quite long and it’s not my style of communication but I feel it important to elaborate beyond bullet points to give you a better picture of our chamber work.