January 2016 Inside this issue: GM’s Report Member Spotlight New Members Events Review Committee Mid-Year Review Workforce Development Workplace Wellness
CHAMBER at a glance
2 3 3 4 5 7 8
a publication of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Advancing Business Issues
A
s 2015 comes to close, I hope we can all celebrate another prosperous year here in Brandon. As business starts to wind down with the holidays, personally, I like to spend some time reflecting on the year I’ve had and laying plans for the year ahead. I’m going to use my space in this newsletter to discuss our Chamber activities in 2015 and outline some of the things we will achieve in 2016.
policy is in an active follow-up stage. We’ve met with developers, City management, and directors of Development Services to express member concerns with process and customer service issues multiple times. We’re pleased to see recognition of these issues by the management team and look forward to the implementation of new customer service initiatives, and the new developer portal system that On the following pages, you’ll see midwere part of our recommendations. year updates from each of our standing After some initial pushback from the Committees City, feedback from outlining all of the management of the hard work that goes departments has been “Using our on at our Chamber. positive. We look forward councillor I’d like to extend a to further improvements in pairings, we hearty thank-you to 2016, as we continue to our volunteers that check in with all were able to make this happen. A stakeholders. communicate vast majority of the our message.” initiatives our 2) The Keystone Centre Chamber takes on Funding issue was a hot come from these committees and the issue around our board table, full of people who work on them. lively debate from all of our directors. It’s not a secret that the At the executive level, we’ve worked Keystone Centre is a significant diligently on drafting three new policies, economic driver in Western engaging stakeholders, and finally, Manitoba. The Centre hosts events advocating for our recommendations: large, and small; providing our community with a large part of its 1) The Municipal Red Tape Reduction social, recreational, and cultural
Jordan Ludwig, Chamber President fabric. For this reason, we were strong advocates of a long-term funding model for the Keystone Centre. This long term funding model allows the Centre to make strategic decisions - proactively solving problems rather than reacting to problems after they present themselves. Using our councillor pairings, where our board members meet with City councillors one-on-one, we were able to communicate our message. Now that the City has committed to the funding, we’re looking to the Province to come to the table. While we are aware of the importance of the Centre to our community, we are also cognizant of the responsibility to the tax-payers of Brandon and the Province at large. For this reason, we also encourage the board and leadership (Continued on page 6)