Mary Ingersoll, Chamber Director, Mary reported that there are still opportunities to sponsor or host a Chamber Meeting for the July through November meetings. Cost of sponsorship is $350.

Saturday 06/05/21, Savannah City Wide Garage Sale, a fundraiser for RSVP

We have some new Chamber members this month, Raegan's Earring Boutique, Cabinets, Counters & More, Tarbell Marketing & Design and Department Of Health and Senior Services/Veteran's Division. Tarbell may be looking for a permanent location but we have nothing, so it's time to be talking to potential businesses, because there's very little vacant commercial space, the only thing move-in ready right now that I'm aware of would be where Brown's Apparel had been located. We do have someone who would like to open a yoga studio and offer Reiki massage. That storefront space wasn't exactly what she's looking for she'd like hard surface floors and a nice aesthetic. We're actually talking about one of the apartments that's vacant above a storefront on the Square, although it wouldn't be handicap accessible.

Don't forget to sign up for our text alerts and we also have plenty of Chamber Directories.

I do Medicare Supplements, Life and Health Insurance. I have my office in Savannah and then I have an office in Tarkio also. If you have any questions about Medicare, which a lot of people do when they get those mailings, I can help you.

Federal money came in on June 1, currently there's a 151 pages of directives. The only other thing right now is June 17. The Commission is hosting The Northwest Missouri Meeting. There will be twenty two counties represented. It's going to be held at Timber Ridge. We would like to have door prizes, maybe something branded with your business. A ball cap, shirt, anything you would like to donate. We need around seventy door prizes total, so if you're business has anything that they want to give out as door prizes, contact me.

We have a ton of exciting stuff that is going on for this month. We will be moving into our new building this month, I'm just saying that into existence. We're excited just have a seat on the table, Square, where all the action seems to be. We currently have four things going on right now.

A while back I mentioned that we'd be having an open house and grand opening in the future. We hope to start remodeling the car wash this month.

If you are one of our customers, thank you. If you're not the bugs and mosquitoes are coming.

United Fiber is getting ready to be in Fillmore. We're also laying fiber around the Helena area.

We have been in in business for about 27 years. Our motto is, "If I wouldn't have it in my house, I'm not gonna sell it." For 27 years this seems to be working well. We do cabinetry and solid surface counter tops. We have a counter top product called Onyx, that comes with a lifetime guarantee. This guarantee is transferrable. It doesn't matter if you mess it up, or something happens to it, it will be replaced with no questions asked. We do commercial and residential work, kitchens and bathrooms.

The Federal money that came in needs to be determined how we're going to actually help people or help communities. The government is encouraging large projects such as broadband and infrastructure that will make a permanent impact on our community. That seems to be the most of the information that we're receiving about that, and we only got half of it, we got the first half on June, 1, and so we will not get the second half until

June 2022. This money will need to be allocated by December 31, 2024 and completely finished by December 31, 2026.

The last day of school parade was good and I hope everyone enjoyed. It was a great day and the rain held off until the very end and the community seemed be excited

Rotary put on a Cinco de Mayo on the Square and we had good attendance.

We are doing summer school, masks are optional. Things are going really well with us there and the plan is that that will be how we start school next year. We're really thankful to Mary at Inspirations, who has jumped up and started an after school childcare, we know that's going to be great for our kids, and those parents that need that service.

I just wanted to mention, we're gonna have Entrepreneurship Week on July 12 through July 16. There will be different free workshops and events and a luncheon.

Mia Silkett is interning at the Museum.

Our first big event is our Vintage Tractor Show, which is Saturday June 12th, from one to five at the Museum. There will be cool vintage tractors of all makes. We're having demonstrations, rock painting contest, cookie baking contest, super farmer kid contest and billy bingo. At 4:30 pm the tractors will leave the Museum to do a small parade down first street ending at LaVerna Senior Living.

Then we have our Kids Camp, that will be held August 3 - 5th, for kids in the third through fifth grades. Enrollment is limited. The theme is the 1950's life on the farm and in small towns.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the Missouri Bicentennial. The Museum will display the Missouri Bicentennial quilt on November 16th. There will also be on display the Andrew County quilt, which at the present has forty blocks made.

The Missouri Bicentennial organizers want us to have a old fashioned ice cream social, so we're going to do that on August 10th. That's the day that Missouri became a state. We're going to do that at the Museum but I'm hoping that the Chamber and the Rotary and different people will want to partner with us to put that on and to get people out. We're even talking about having a pet show that day.

The City is still working on budgets.

Inspirations Dance is having a recital at the Missouri Theater in person next Sunday. I'm really excited about that. We do have our Bloom Fine Arts preschool still running strong and there's three week long summer camps for preschool. We have our Summer Arts Enrichment Academy that is a week long full day camp with various arts. Will Stuck will be teaching visaul and performance arts. Mrs Voss from the middle school in vocal and instrumental music, and Miss Jessica from our staff will teach a little fun dance class as part of the week.

I'm still working with my regional colleagues and Upstate Missouri in tackling the economic development issues of access to affordable childcare, and affordable housing, Those are workforce development issues because if you can't find a place for your kids to go, you're not able to work. If you cannot find an affordable place to live, you cannot move to wherever the jobs are. So, I have been responding in the childcare portion of that, I have opened Bloom Fine Arts Preschool, and now I'm working on developing an after school care program for our school district. I need a manager for that so if you know anybody who wants to work part time at a decent pay rate, please send them my way. I also was recently invited to Cameron to speak to their main street organization. They have the opposite problem of us, in that they have lots of vacant commercial space in their downtown and they can't figure out how to solve that problem. I told them about our Empty Buildings Tour.

Keli Morris from NWMO Enterprise Facilitation couldn't be here today but please don't hesitate to seek her help. She's a great resource for people who are opening a business or current business owners.

We have five of our Leadership Savannah classmates here with us today. Last month we covered education and infrastructure. Then we did the rope course at Camp Geiger. Annette Weeks said that this coming month we have our last class coming up and it will be on agriculture. Then we have graduation on June 15th, that will be held at Timber Ridge.

We had a really good session this year. We passed 69 bills this year, 29 Senate bills and 40 House bills. We gave tax credits to adoptive families and foster care families and special needs children. We did raise the gas tax for five years to fix our roads, that is refundable if you want to save your receipts and go online to get your gas tax back, you can do that. We did pass the Wayfair online sales tax. It's not a great thing to be increasing taxes all the time but these are two taxes I think were very important for us. It's important for us to keep our roads up. It's important for us to have a level playing field for businesses. We support law enforcement. We said there will be no vaccine passports required in Missouri by any state or government entity. That's your personal information and your personal choice whether you get a vaccine or not.