April 7, 2021
4 H Youth Building Savannah
Mary Ingersoll welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked Rolling Hills Library for sponsoring the meeting today. She also thanked the MU Extension for being the host.The Pasture Cafe catered the meal.
Mary gave the blessing before the meal.
Mary Ingersoll, Chamber Director, Mary reported that there are still opportunities to sponsor or host a Chamber Meeting for the May through December meetings. Cost of sponsorship is $350.
Please remember how important it is to share and like our area business posts on Facebook.
Upcoming Events:
05/05/21 12:00 noon, May Chamber Meeting
Tuesday 06/01/21, Tuesday Take Over for Waggin Tails on Facebook
Saturday 06/05/21, Savannah City Wide Garage Sale, a fundraiser for RSVP
To start the meeting, Mary asked for everyone to introduce themselves and if they have a quick announcement at this time. Members who have several things to report will do so after all are introduced.
Brandon Eddy, Eddy Professional Bookkeeping
I'm the owner of Eddy Professional Bookkeeping along with my wife. She still works at Clifton Larson Allen in St. Joseph, which is where I left to start up this business. So this is my first time at the chamber meeting and excited to be here. Right now we are located remotely from our home.
Brent Rosenauer, The Savannah Reporter
Super exciting week for news, we have an election so all the election results are in front of you right now. You can grab a paper or go online, but aside from that as a business we are super, super excited to be moving to the Northwest corner of the square. Our building is boarded up right now because Jacob Cliff with Cliff Brothers Construction is doing a little bit of work for us in there, but it's going to be gorgeous once it's done. We're hoping sometime in May we're moved in an operational. Aside from that, on the business side we are offering this month and next month a ton of newspaper specials that are coming out. We've got a spring sports, Savannah FFA group, and also have a big graduation tab, that will be coming out and going to parents and kids. So if you as a business want to get involved in any of that, give us a shout out. Aside from that, we're just happy to be involved. If there's ever anything we can do, it's exciting news you have on your business side or exciting news you have personally in your life, you'd be surprised the details and stories that make a great article in the newspaper.
Kathy Hoffman, MU Extension
I'm the Office Manager with MU Extension in the courthouse. If you're having an event and are interested in renting the facilities, let us know. It's also a good time to get your soil tested.
Jerry Baker, City Of Savannah
Jerry was just re elected for a City Council seat. The City is busy working on grants at this time and taking bids for paving projects.
Mike Gallagher, Wells Bank
Was in attendance.
Dr. Eric Kurre, Savannah R3 School District
Next school board meeting next Tuesday (4/13) at Savannah High School. There will be a decision on the mascot.
Another big event is the homecoming parade, that we did not have because of COVID last fall. The homecoming parade is a big event for this town and we have scheduled the parade for May 20 at 2pm. I have some applications at our central office if you're interested in putting a float into the parade. We're going to recognize our seniors and some of the spring athletics that never gets recognized in the Fall.
Summer School will be very similar to what we have always done. We are offering some extra credit recovery at middle school that we've never done before for some of those kids who have struggled due to the pandemic. Summer school will also be held at Minnie Cline and John Glenn.
Mary Ingersoll, Inspirations Dance Center and Bloom Fine Arts Preschool
Registration is open at this time for Bloom Preschool. Bloom is an educational preschool that meets two mornings a week. It has a proven fine arts curriculum and play based learning. So we'd love to have little ones for our summer sessions, or for next school year if you know any kiddos three to five, send them our way. Summer classes are open for registration and considerations at Inspirations Dance Center.
There will be no Artscape in St.Joseph this year. To fill this void we developed a Summer Enrichment Academy. The last week of July, we're running a full day of arts programming integrations with some of the best teachers around in visual performing and vocal arts. There will be vocal and instrumental music so you can do a full day of arts education. The Academy will run from Monday through Thursday, for elementary through middle school age students.
Chad Fulton, Fulton Construction
Fulton Construction, offers new home construction and septic systems.
Chanda Profit, Nodaway Valley Bank
Wanted to let everyone know that the Rotary is still having our disc golf tournament on April 24th. If you'd like to be a sponsor it's $50 to sponsor a hole for the tournament.
Stacy Cole, Creations Engraving and Embroidery
Stacey reminded everyone that Mothers Day is coming up, please see them for any items you might need.
Jayne White, Andrew County Health Department
We have survived the last few months. So COVID has done something good for the health department in that we have expanded our staff. So I have two of our new nurses with us. Jessica will oversee our mch contract and things like that. We're looking at mental health, for the community with that. So we're excited about the private contracting. We were supposed to have done that a couple weeks ago. We got an extension, so we're working on that. Hillary, some of you may recognize Hillary, she was my student nurse there two years ago and we talked her into joining us as well.
Jackie Aeschliman, Aeschliman Insurance
I have lived and sold insurance for three years in Savannah. I also have an office in Tarkio. I have annuities, life insurance and Medicare supplements. The Savannah office is open on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
I don't know if everybody knows where the Swanson's used to live, but I have bought their home located across from the park. I use this location for my office. My children live here in Savannah, one is a teacher at the high school and one works for United Fiber. I also have grand children here.
Jill Barnes, Rolling Hills Library
We are open for business, we still require a mask to come in. We are getting ready for summer reading and we're going to be able to do in person kids programs. So starting in the middle of May we will be able to get your kids signed up for programs and win prizes for summer reading.
Rachel Piper, Wells Bank
Rachel spoke about the Savannah Swim team. They have around 140 members, and the team is one of the largest in the area. They are trying to keep this affordable for families. They are looking for sponsorships.
Jeff Leake, Village Storage and Leake Fireworks
I have building storage down the road and if you have anything you need to store, such as boats, RV, and just regular stuff you want to get out of your garage please give us a call. I also teach part time at Lafayette High School in the St. Joe School District.
Perry Cooperider, Preferred Pest Control
I'm the owner of Preferred Pest Control. Some good news for us is we just closed on a building yesterday, the old Vanderbilt's building. You will see some construction as we're going to build another building back behind it. So hopefully in the summer sometime we will actually get to move in there and get going.
Dawn Cooperider, Preferred Pest Control
We're also looking for full time office person and another full time
technician, so if you know anybody looking for a job, please send them our way.
Leah Garcia, Freudenthal Home Health and Hospice
Our new building that's being built on Gene Field and Woodbine is hopefully going to be done around June. So we're going to be moving from Frederick to there. And then our Center for Parkinson's will be moving there with us. We're also having a 5k this Sunday if anybody feels like running or walking.
Matt Wilson, Preferred Pest Control
I'm the Field Supervisor, so if you have any bug problems, give us a call.
Eleanor Cobb, Andrew County Museum
I'm the curator at the Andrew County Museum.
Jan Glenn, Andrew County Museum
We are pushing ahead with our Andrew County Quilt Project. This is the Bicentennial year in Missouri. There will be a state quilt, which will be a block from each county, and it's going to be at the museum in November. So we've decided we wanted to do an Andrew County quilt to go along with it. You don't have to be able to quilt you just have to sew or paint on fabric. We're looking for blocks that have designs that relate to Andrew County. It can be landmarks, farms, businesses, sororities, churches, from the past to present. So just call me and I'll give you the information sheet. There are a lot of places that need to be represented. We're hoping to have at least 12 to 16 blocks to make a decent sized quilt. I think honestly, we're up to 30 committed at this point. But I think there's a lot of places that should be represented that haven't been.
In April, we're going back to doing our Veterans coffees after stopping for Covid. We've done them since I've been here practically and we feel like the Veterans who want to have been vaccinated now and so we're starting, they're excited. You don't have to be a veteran to come to those coffees. If you're supportive of veterans, if you're interested in stories come visit, it's on the third Wednesday, which is the 21st at 1:30. It's coffee and cookies and water and you listen to the stories.
We're going to do our kids camp, the first week of August, it's open to kids, second through fifth grade. It will be mostly outside and we limit our numbers. We have all kinds of things from mule drawn carriages, to pigs, to trains to whatever. So we're looking forward to be able to plan that again.
We also have two exhibits coming up. Brighton Kurre is doing an exhibit for his Eagle project. It's an exhibit on Boy Scout Troop 60 through the years. The exhibit should open sometime in May. The second exhibit is on the Northwest Electric Cooperative, which was created 85 years ago. The Act made it possible for rural farms to receive electricity. Those are the two exhibits that are coming up that we hope to be opening in the middle of May. So get get us on your schedule.
Jan Glenn, Savannah Alumni Association
The Alumni Golf Tournament is scheduled for June 12th. So if you're interested in playing in that, or interested in sponsoring that, let me know. The other thing is just to get the word out and make sure everybody knows that this is the year for our three year Alumni bash on the Square. We weren't convinced that June would work, so we are going to have it in October, coordinated with Homecoming Week. It will be October 9th. If you could help us spread that word, and we could use help. So if anybody is interested in helping with that event, please let me know.
Brad Jarvis, Clean Freak Auto Spa
I own the car wash here in town. I also am the owner of Authentic Detailing Products, so anybody that's looking to detail a car or in the detailing business we have your product.
Jason Sarsany, Edward Jones
I own the Edward Jones Office that is located in the heart of the financial district of Savannah. I'm also a member of Rotary and there is no limit on the number of sponsorships you can buy for the Disc Golf Tournament.
Jason Sarsany, Leadership Savannah
Last month the topic was entrepreneurship. They met at Inspirations Dance Center and they did an afternoon business scavenger hunt around town.
Mary Ingersoll added, We had a really nice robust conversation about the business needs in our community, and the future of what Savannah might look like, or what it might be. It's always interesting conversation to me, and especially with people that don't regularly talk to me to see what their input was. There were some really cool ideas that came out of that.
Christina Melton, Bank Midwest
I am the newly promoted banking center manager at the Savannah location.
We are a full relationship bank. So if any of you have any banking or lending needs, I would love to sit down and talk with you. We specialize in SBA loans for the bank.
No guarantee fees on the SBA program right now, so it's good time to get in until the end of September here.
Mary Ingersoll, Chamber Director
Thanks, everybody. Glad you're here. A couple of chamber things, if you're not getting text alerts from us at the chamber and you would like to, please let Cindy or myself know. Cindy makes everything happen, she's wonderful.
If you need any more copies of the Chamber Directory Visitor's Guide, we have many available. We didn't distribute as many with everything closed for months, so we have lots of them available, and we'd be happy to bring them to you . We keep the high traffic locations in town such as Brothers Market, Break Time and the Post Office stocked.
We do Take Over Tuesdays, which is a social media promotion, we have a big following on our social media. We will feature this on our Facebook page. Any business can do that, It's free with your membership. You just have to call me and we pick a Tuesday. The best part is the traction it receives on the Facebook Live that we'll do together, which is about a five minute interview and I promise I'll make it easy on you. It will be just you and I talking. It's really simple, but let me know if you want to do a Take Over Tuesday.
We are working on new welcome signs, and we're now waiting on MO DOT for their feedback and approval. We would like one to be placed in the median at the South City limit, with breakaway posts which should be compliant with their rules, but I'm just waiting on them now. We also have the the digital sign that we operate in front of the fire station on 71 Highway, as well as our daily featured member on Facebook. So if you're following our Facebook page, the five daily featured members for the week are also featured on the digital sign. And that's just a benefit of the membership in our chamber.
And finally, we appreciate Rolling Hills Libraries for their fantastic sponsorship of our meeting today, the rest of the year is wide open. We would love your support if you're willing and interested to sponsoring a chamber meeting. The cost is $350, which covers the cost of catering 35 people times 10 pretty easy math, it's usually pretty consistent attendance like this. If you have a place to host we can come to you. Or if you don't, there's lots of community rooms and we can arrange that for you. So let me know if you'd be interested, we have availability through the end of the year.
Mary Ingersoll for Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation
Mary wanted to put a plug in for Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation and Keli Morris. They're a great free, confidential resource for businesses. If you know someone who's thinking about starting a business, or if you have a business and have growth, or if you're like me, and you're growing from a solo for you're now having my first full time staff member. They're a wonderful resource. And I would highly recommend it. They also sometimes can talk you out of making the worst decision of your life and ruining your family's like financial future.
Mary Ingersoll, Chamber Director
You've probably heard me say, but it's worth reiterating that the Chamber has taken a little different stance this year. For the last five years, we've really tried to think about from a top down perspective, how can we get our community thinking about future plans. My take on that is that it's not bad enough, like there's no pain point. Savannah is good enough and so nobody really wants to go to a whole lot of extra work or trouble to do some sort of planning that may never come to fruition. So we're kind of taking a different tactic here. It's talking about how can we, progress towards level two, we're talking about cultivating conversations with people who have property or looking into our community. So we're excited about how those conversations are progressing and interesting. We're talking about people like the Cooperiders as they have purchased one of the last vacant commercial properties. You know, two years ago, we started doing empty buildings tours and talking about vacant commercial properties. And it's interesting where we are now in the cycles that there's nothing to talk about. I know there's nothing I can take you to show. Even a year ago it took the whole afternoon to go through everything. So now, that doesn't mean that it won't cycle back again, that happens, that's normal cycle of business. We don't wish ill of anyone. But, that's an interesting place to be and so it's interesting conversations that we're having about what does that mean for someone? Or what if somebody wanted to open some other kind of business again? Where would they go? Where would they do that?
Most startups don't have the cash to build a facility to open the business. So that's an interesting position for us to be in as a community. We're an outlier for Northwest Missouri, because we have a growing population.
We already have the lowest workforce per capita than anywhere else, We are a bedroom community, there are virtually no jobs for the number of people who live here, everyone goes somewhere else to work. So it's just an interesting place to be.
The Northwest Missouri Economic Development Roundtable has combined with the north east side of the state to now be upstate Missouri. We've taken on a couple issues that have kind of just risen to the top for us that are important for Workforce Development. There are two issues that are really rising to the top as work force issues, which is why they're becoming important economic development. One is access to affordable childcare, and that is an interesting conversation. It's interesting to me with both hats because I opened Bloom Fine Arts Preschool. So I'm working through the state's process of trying to be in good standing, but it's been open 10 months. Dawn Cooperider is losing an employee because they can't find a daycare here. I gave her all the resources I know locally. I think I probably know most the daycare providers around here, there's not a lot of openings. It's not a business, that is gonna make a ton of money, so that's interesting to think about and talk about and be a part of those conversations, and how can we make that better for our communities.
The second issue is access to affordable housing. Now we know that the issue here, it's less of a workforce issue here for us, because it's not like we have a Kawasaki where we need 3,000 people to work and they need places to live. It's a little different for us. We know that housing is a demand and we don't have access to affordable housing. It's interesting to be a part of those conversations from an upstate Missouri perspective, and then how we play into those a little differently. But those are important issues for us too. So just things to think about. They're on our radar at the Chamber on kind of a long term perspective.
Mary
Thanks for coming today.
There's a lot of great things going on in Savannah and if you are a huge part of that, so appreciate your work and your commitment to the community. Have a great week and let me know if you want to sponsor a meeting.
Chamber Reminders:
Sign up for text alerts. Link at the top of this newsletter.
Let us know if you need more Chamber Directories (we have plenty).
Takeover Tuesdays - Contact us to reserve a date for Facebook Take Over Tuesdays.
Hosts and sponsors are now being scheduled for the 2021 Monthly Chamber Meetings. Contact us if interested in hosting or sponsoring in 2021. Cost is $350 to provide the lunch. We appreciate all of our sponsors making this so convenient for our members!