— Members will decide on merger with Oliver & OK Falls —
(OSOYOOS TIMES — September 5, 2007)
The Osoyoos Chamber of Commerce leadership has called a special meeting for all 180 of its member-businesses next Tuesday, Sept. 11 in Oliver, where it will ask the members to vote to dissolve the local organization and join a new South Okanagan Chamber of Commerce encompassing Osoyoos, Oliver and Okanagan Falls.
The march towards merging the Chambers from the three towns has been underway for seven months.
On Feb. 5 the Osoyoos Chamber surveyed local member-businesses and found they approved of setting up a task force to study the idea of amalgamating with the Chambers in Oliver and OK Falls.
The Osoyoos Chamber leadership has said from the beginning it favours the idea because of a number of benefits, including: sharing resources; lower costs; more political clout from a bigger organization; and the opportunity for better networking among businesses.
On May 23 the boards of directors of the three Chambers voted to proceed with amalgamation. They said they accepted the recommendation of their co-operation committee to merge.
Since then, the groups have been drafting the new bylaws that members will be asked to adopt at next week's meeting in order to dissolve the Osoyoos, Oliver and OK Falls Chambers and join the new South Okanagan Chamber of Commerce.
All along, leaders have said the Chamber offices in the three communities will remain.
Plans call for there to be a transitional board of directors for the new South Okanagan Chamber until the new organization's annual general meeting in 2008. It would consist of the president, first vice-president and treasurer from each of the three current Chambers, as well as the amalgamation committee member from each community, and the manager of the Oliver Chamber as a non-voting member.
The Osoyoos members of that new board would be Neil Brimblecombe, Myers Bennett and Ron Leigh.
Annual fees for the South Okanagan Chamber would be $50 for individuals and non-profit groups, $150 for businesses with up to five employees, and $250 for businesses with more staff.
The expected total membership of the new Chamber would be about 450 “ made up of 180 from Osoyoos, 50 from Okanagan Falls, and 220 from Oliver.
In response to apparent rumours that the local Chamber office might close, Osoyoos Chamber president Brimblecombe is adamant: The office will definitely remain open here “ long term. He wonders if the fact that current office administrator Cindy Swanson is leaving at the end of September might have caused the office-closing rumours.
We will have a new office manager as of Oct. 1, Brimblecombe says.
The local Chamber president says efforts have been made to keep the amalgamation process open to the Chamber membership, the public and the news media along the way.
Brimblecombe stresses it is important for Chamber members to come out to the brief Sept. 11 meeting at the Toasted Oak restaurant in Oliver, to have their say.
This is the chance for the general membership to decide yes or no on the amalgamation question.
