Royal Bank account manager Dolores Harris is the new president of the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce.
Harris began her one-year term on January 1, succeeding past president Lawrence Wegner.Harris has been a Chamber director for three years, and served as executive vice-president of the organization last year.
"We've got a lot of interesting things happening in Yorkton," said Harris. "It's a great time to be a member of the Chamber as well as a director, so I thought it was time to step forward and be president."
In a statement released to the media, Past President Wegner reflected on his term at the organization's head.
"The Chamber held many successful events this past year. As well, it was able to bring together the financial and real estate communities with the city's building department to discuss the city's development and building guidelines."
Some of the Chamber's priorities for 2011, according to Harris, include addressing the city's housing shortage and working with other organizations on planned expansions to the Yorkton Airport and Parkland College. The housing issue will be the subject of the Chamber's first public event of the year, a breakfast seminar featuring guest speaker Tom Seeley at the Ramada on January 21.
"Hopefully it will spur some good conversation on what we need to do in Yorkton to get the housing situation taken care of," said Harris. "It's one thing to get a college here, but if there's no place for people to live to attend college, that makes it very difficult."
Chairs for the Chamber's various committees are all in place for the coming year, and some restructuring will bring a new approach to how the organization engages the community. The former marketing and event planning committee has been split into two dedicated committees.
"We found ourselves so wrapped up in planning events that we didn't have a lot of time to work on the communications and marketing piece," said Harris.
The new Marketing and Communications Committee will reach out to members over electronic and social media that the Chamber had previously left untapped.
The remainder of the Chamber's executive is made up of Doug Kitsch as executive vice-president, Ron Irvine as 1st VP, Ryan Hoffman as 2nd VP, and Amie Zamonsky as 3rd VP. New directors Don Rae and Evan Ortynsky join Brent Murdock, Chad Hilton, Dick DeRyk, Rob Bear, Tom Seeley, Ron Evinou, Cassidy Westberg, and Corey Werner on the board.
The Yorkton Chamber of Commerce represents more than 450 businesses in the area.
