Dear Chamber Supporters:
2 days and change until Christmas is upon us! The holiday season is one of my favorite times each year and this week has built up a significant amount of excitement internally. Makayla and I will be headed over to Topeka for a handful of days with her family tomorrow. Then on Christmas day, we’ll jet over to Missouri to spend a handful of days with my family. With all the traveling Makayla and I will be doing over the next nine days, I will not be in the office next week. Sherri will still be holding down the fort if you need anything before the new year.
Ad Astra Wins by a Landslide
The end of a saga took place this last week as the State of Kansas announced the new license plate design, chosen by the people (picture here). This new design won quite effortlessly, with the 53% majority choosing the plate with the "Ad Astra" dome sculpture in the bottom left corner of the license plate. The next most voted for design only received 50,000 some votes compared to the winner with over 140,000. It's worth mentioning the original design did receive 5% of the votes... I'm assuming that was the original artists submitting as many votes as they could over the course of the week. Through this whole process, we actually made state history, as there has never been public input on our standard vehicle tag before. Stash that fact away for a future Kansas-based trivia question!
End of Year Shenanigans
You’d think everything would slow down at the end of the year for our office, but because of our upcoming Annual Awards Banquet (January 25th, get tickets here), we’ve been go go go. This includes gathering auction items, working through logistics with our great hosts Ottawa University, and gathering nominations for the awards. I do want to thank everyone who submitted a nomination, hopefully the online form made that process slightly easier. I also want to thank the selection committee which is made up of the former five Russell Crites winners. They would’ve met yesterday to come to a conclusion on all five awards. I’m extremely excited to hand these out on the 25th, some really great individuals were selected, and I look forward to having you celebrate with us!
When discussing awards, I’m curious about your thoughts. What kind of award do you think is not currently being represented in this lineup (list of awards here)? What type of category or recognition should we think about in future years? If you have suggestions or general thoughts, I’d love to hear about them. This will be a conversation Sherri and I will be having in 2024 and the more thoughts on the matter, the better! Reply to this email or give me a call after the new year if you have a suggestion.
Building Bridges with Legislators
Our congressional representative Sharice Davids came to Franklin County yesterday to check out the Peckham’s Memory Tree Lane. She was able to get a hayride tour through the display and stick around long enough to talk a bit about the farm bill she is tasked to work on (picture here). She and her team continue to learn more about our community having only been a representative for our area for a short time. It’s nice knowing people in DC are thinking about what’s going on in our County, thanks to the Peckhams for hosting!
On a slightly different topic, but still relating to our legislature (in this case state legislators). We have announced the dates for our 2024 Legislative Coffees. To stay uniform, we will be having these on the third Saturday of each month, starting January 20th through April 20th (all beginning at 10am). We will hopefully be joined by Representative Rebecca Schmoe, Representative Carrie Barth, Senator Caryn Tyson, and Senator Rick Kloos. You can either join in person at the City Hall Commission Chambers or on the City of Ottawa’s Facebook page as it will be livestreamed. These are great opportunities to get to know our state legislators better, and even ask a question or two about what is going on in Topeka. I’m thankful we’ve always had such great attendance from both those who represent us, and constituents alike.
2023 Wrap Up
As we look forward to the start of a new year, Sherri and I took some time to reflect on all that took place in 2023. To be honest, it blows me away all that our Chamber was able to accomplish (I apologize in advance for the long list). We would’ve held 51 Chamber networking events (Coffees, Ribbon Cuttings, and After Hours). This includes several weeks in the year that we don’t schedule like the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the Friday before Christmas and New Year’s. But 51 events means we were gathering as a Chamber with members almost every week this past year… I wouldn’t have it any other way! We had 2 free community concerts, 850 participants at Flea Junk & Trunk, 500 participants in Ladies Night Out, as well as 46 businesses participating in LNO (a record amount). Annual events didn’t stop there, we brought back Eggs and Issues, celebrated the holidays with the Mayors Tree Lighting, and shot off a great fireworks show. We held 4 Legislative Coffees in the spring as well as a Candidates forum in the fall. We graduated 19 future leaders through Leadership Franklin County and have another 19 going through the class right now. Online we had 138 different events on our website calendar over the course of 2023, as well as produced two newsletters every week (that’s just over 100 if you count this week’s). We published a physical Chamber Community Guide (printed 1,000 copies), and we created several community videos for our website. We had 48 individuals enrolled in our Chamber Blue health insurance program through Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Through our travel program, Sherri took 34 travelers with her to southern England for a couple of weeks. We were able to help keep over $24,000 in our community through our Chamber Currency program, directly benefiting our businesses through local spending (that ended up being almost two reams of green construction paper for those counting). We were also able to survey over 80 individuals in hopes of bettering your local Chamber.
There are plenty of other things that go on through the year that are hard to list on paper, this is in no way conclusive... but it’s still something we’re very proud of! Not so proud to know that we can’t do even better next year, and so that’s what we plan on doing… elevating our organization even further in 2024. But until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours from your Chamber staff (picture here).
Ryland Miller
President/CEO
Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce
ryland@ottawakansas.org
785-242-1000
