Courtesy Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce
The Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce will hold its 99th annual dinner at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, at the Saratoga Springs City Center.
It will be the first event for the new chairman of the Chamber board of directors, David Collins of D.A. Collins, the construction company based in Wilton.
Chamber officials said a crowd of more than 700 is expected to attend. The event will also serve to honor Matt Jones of The Jones Firm for his volunteer leadership as the 2016 board chairman.
“Matt Jones really did an outstanding job as the chairman of the Chamber’s board of directors” said Collins. “During his tenure, Matt asked that we move our board meetings out of Saratoga Springs to locations in Clifton Park, Schuylerville, Ballston Spa, Malta, and Wilton and he invited the supervisors in those communities to join us in an effort to be more countywide in impact.
“He delivered flowers to the employees of Saratoga Bridges on Leap of Kindness Day and took two trips to Burlington, Vt., to plan and organize a new City Share effort between our two counties, where we shared common challenges, opportunities and discussed what our two areas are doing to remain successful.”
The Chamber recently published its own “Top 10 Accomplishments and Stories from 2016” on its website at www.saratoga.org. Besides hosting board meetings across Saratoga County, inventing Leap of Kindness Day, and organizing a City Share program with Burlington, the Chamber under Jones’ leadership took a Chamber delegation to Cuba, helped create a six-point plan to reduce aggressive panhandling in downtown Saratoga Springs, worked closely with Sen. Kathy Marchione and Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner to pass a bipartisan bill in the legislature to reprivatize NYRA and celebrated the fact that Saratoga County became the healthiest county in all of New York state in which to live, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
“We believe progress was made in 2016 to reprivatize NYRA as a nonprofit corporation and to support the City Center’s parking structure and our advocacy on these two important projects will continue in 2017 until we get the job done,” said Collins. “Our board of directors is unique in that all of our volunteer board members live and work in communities across Saratoga County. We live all over Saratoga County and collectively work in a wide range of sectors in firms that are small and large. “
At the dinner the Chamber will also recognize the 12 volunteer members of the local SCORE Chapter. Across the country, there are more than 300 SCORE chapters where member volunteers provide free confidential advice to entrepreneurs and business owners to help them start a new business.
For more details on the annual dinner, visit www.saratoga.org.