Brrrr! What a cold and snowy week across the Midwest. Getting tired of these single-digit temperatures! Looks like this morning was the last time we’ll see the thermostat read 0° for the next couple of weeks (or hopefully for the rest of the season).

As a local soccer fan, we witnessed one of the coldest games in Sporting KC’s history this week. They start their regular season this weekend, but had a cup competition against internationally known Messi and his team, Inter Miami, on Wednesday. The games had a wind chill of -14 degrees. Thousands still braved the cold to watch Sporting (maybe more likely to watch Messi) play in KC. I personally sat on my couch in the living room―I definitely preferred it that way!

Legislative Coffee Recap

This month’s Legislative Coffee was shorthanded at the legislator’s table, with Rebecca Schmoe being the lone representative to attend this past Saturday morning (pictures here). We appreciate her taking time out of her busy schedule to address the crowd, even if it meant doing it single-handedly. Here are a few of the topics that got brought up:

SCR 1611 – Changing how Kansas Supreme Court Justices are chosen
HB 2007 – The House proposed budget. Rebecca shared how this process went this year (given it’s the first time the budget has been proposed in this way)
Representative Schmoe’s take on the “right to bear arms”
An update on Rebecca’s committee assignments
County Clerks need to post items in the local newspaper

These are just a few of the conversations had last Saturday morning. If you would like to watch any of those moments or replay the whole Coffee, you can do so on our Facebook page (view a direct link here). Because we moved through questions so quickly, we also heard from Sharice Davids’ Community Liaison, Ben Muiller, who happened to be in attendance. He gave some info about how his office can assist constituents and how he can be a resource to get questions answered.

Your Voice Matters: Tell Us What the Chamber Means to You

One of the ongoing topics our board and staff have been tackling over the last year is how our organization effectively communicates with our members and the community as a whole. One of the projects our staff is working on is a compilation of written testimonies from our members. These can be about your experiences, things your Chamber does that you enjoy interacting with (programs/benefits), ways you would describe our organization to someone, or maybe why you choose to be a Chamber member. We plan on taking a systematic approach to gathering this information but I thought I’d pose it here first. If you would like to share your thoughts, click this link to share (click here for a place to share thoughts about the Ottawa Chamber). We hope that through your words, we can better connect with our community and the other organizations that make it up. So thank you in advance!

Leadership Franklin County Explores Local Governance

Leadership Franklin County met yesterday for another class session (picture here). This month’s topic was local governance. This coincided with their trip to the state capitol the first week of February. But yesterday, the class spent time learning and hearing from some smaller government-related boards like rural fire, different townships, and even cemetery boards. This was followed by conversations with the City of Ottawa Finance Director, Melanie Landis, and the City’s IT department. The class finished with a panel of elected officials and learning about Robert’s Rules of Order. This class ended up having a lot of classroom time, but given the single-digit temperatures, that might actually have been a positive thing! There are only a couple more classes until we see this group graduate from this historied program.

Chamber staff will be putting our skills to the test tomorrow evening at the Ottawa Police Foundation Trivia Night. It sounds like Chief Weingartner and his board are expecting a packed house. We’ll be sure to finish in the top 20 (as long as there are no more than twenty teams). If I don’t see you there, talk to you soon!

Ryland Miller

President/CEO

Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce

ryland@ottawakansas.org

785-242-1000