- April 25, 2024
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The Flagler County Chamber of Commerce hopes a collaborative approach to the local economy will bring prosperity to businesses and residents.
“It’s extremely important that we get out and start talking to people proactively, not only with our members, but also with members of the community,” said Garry Lubi, chairman of the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce & Affiliates, at a town hall meeting Thursday morning.
There’s strength to be harnessed if all of the county works together to accomplish certain goals; that was was the reasoning behind a three-year strategic plan the chamber is implementing to promote Flagler County’s growth.
To follow this plan, Lubi said it’s important that the community commits itself to stronger partnerships between businesses within the local economy to promote growth in Flagler County.
Lubi said the best way for a chamber of commerce to operative effectively is to work on a prioritization model and to be vigilant in checking the chamber’s progress.
He identified the four top priorities the chamber targeted for the next three to four years and said that he and the rest of the chamber are committed to meeting milestones associated with those goals and analyzing the effectiveness of their approach on a monthly basis.
The first of these priorities is government affairs, because through being active in local government, the chamber believes it can make a marked impact on the community.
“We need to make sure we develop a degree of accountability for candidates,” Lubi said. “We need to hold them to doing what they said they were going to do (while they were campaigning).”
The second priority the chamber is striving toward improving is economic development. A large part of making progress toward this goal, Lubi said, is through educating the entire county about why consciously developing the Flagler County economy is important.
It’s also important that the county understand its current businesses and its potential to expand so that they can more deliberately make improvements. For example, agriculture is a huge untapped industry in the area, and knowing this will help the entire community move forward, Lubi said.
The chamber is also trying to improve the county’s technology, because there is much to be gained doing this — including a wider audience in the community. Lubi said that since fewer and fewer people treat phone books as optimum resources, it’s important to adapt.
In accordance with that notion, the chamber recently launched a text messaging service and hopes to soon develop a mobile application for cell phones.
The final priority that the chamber hopes to focus on in the coming years is operational alignment.
“Development starts with the structures,” Lubi said. “We need to align activities and resources with our mission and vision.”
Chamber members who attended the meeting agreed that collaboration is key.
Mark Gerling, owner of Gerling Travel Group in Flagler Beach, said that when he was in the market for a new car, he opted to purchase from Flagler Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep & Ram rather than from a dealership in Daytona Beach, to keep revenue within the community. Making conscious efforts to support local businesses in that way makes a big difference, he said.
“It’s worth the investment,” he said. “The long-term strategy is that if we, as business owners, can look at how we can personally impact the economy, things will improve for everyone.”
