Chair's Corner

FROM THE CHAIR’S CORNER

YOUR CHAMBER CULTIVATING PROSPERITY & QUALITY OF LIFE

Charlie Bailey, Chair of the Board

Your Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce is in the midst of an incredibly successful, productive year. This year our mission has been, in all things we do, to cultivate our community’s prosperity and quality of life through business-focused leadership and action.

At the Annual Chamber Breakfast we were honored to have Eric Spiegel, former President and CEO of Seimens USA, share insight on the importance of having a welltrained labor force to serve pillar industries. Not coincidentally, shortly thereafter, The Chamber reaffirmed its long-standing strategic effort to support education and workforce development in the community when we hired Mireya Eavey as our Chief Workforce Strategist. In this role, Mireya will manage the CareerEdge Funders Collaborative through the Chamber, focusing on providing a labor force to our region’s growing industries.

In partnership with a diverse group of local organizations and community leaders, The Chamber undertook the “Decide the Date” effort through which we are seeking to amend the Charter of the City of Sarasota in an attempt to address extremely low voter participation in City Commission elections. Currently, the City’s elections are held in the spring of odd-numbered years. We are seeking to have these elections changed so that they occur in the fall of even-numbered years. We firmly believe this will serve to double or triple the turnout among a broad array of City voters -- and voter participation is the cornerstone of representative democracy. We are pleased that this proposed Charter amendment will be presented to the City voters as a referendum on the November 2018 ballot.

In recognition of the community-shaping impact of the Bayfront 20:20 Planning Initiative, now known as “The Bay,” The Chamber is supporting that effort financially and with volunteer leadership. In May, we were pleased to be joined by AG Lafley, former president and CEO of Procter & Gamble and Chairman of the Sarasota Bayfront Planning Organization (“SBPO”), and Bill Waddell, managing director of SBPO, at our “Big Idea” luncheon where we discussed the vision for the community’s use of the over 50-acres the City of Sarasota owns in downtown perched upon our beautiful Sarasota Bay.

It is an honor to serve as your Chairman and to be a part of an important and special organization like The Chamber that has been serving this community and effecting positive change for almost a century. I am proud to be a part of that history. Our work this year has been incredibly rewarding and I thank you for the privilege.

CHARLIE BAILEY

CHAIR OF THE BOARD