What do we actually do here at the chamber?
By DANA DITTMAR
A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me what all we do here at the Sun City Center chamber.
I’ve written about that very topic before, but most people still don’t know. That got me thinking about all of the requests we get via phone, e-mail and from visitors walking in the door. For months, we have kept daily tally sheets of the traffic we get so we have a better idea of how to schedule more volunteers on Fridays, and make less coffee on Tuesdays. It has been interesting looking back at those sheets and realizing just how much the chamber is involved in all aspects of community life.
There’s a reason we have racks of brochures from all of the one-tank vacation destinations. Several times a day, residents and visitors alike come in and ask for recommendations of places to go or to take the grandkids who are in town for the week. They want information on the Dali Museum, Busch Gardens and Bok Tower. None of this brings any business to our local economy, but it’s part of what we do.
We also make copies and send faxes for people. It can be as simple as sending a one-pager into a Tampa mortgage office or as difficult as sending divorce papers to Germany. That one took over an hour to figure out. Despite being half German, I don’t speak more than a spattering of words and those don’t include asking how to dial Germany. I ended up calling the president of the German American Club for assistance. He was wunderbar.
Often we get people who want us to assist with residential matters. They want to turn in their neighbor who is watering the lawn too much or the habitual speeder in Kings Point. We commiserate with them (“Isn’t that terrible? I hate that, too.”) and refer them to the KP Community Association, the Security Patrol, or whoever has jurisdiction over their community. There isn’t, after all, anything the chamber can do about those things.
The highlight of our day is when someone comes in needing the name of a good roofer, or elder-care attorney, or Realtor, or home health agency, and we can hand them our membership directory and refer them to someone we can vouch for. This is our main mission and the one request we love to get. It means we can promote our member businesses, and we know the work is being done by local companies that have a strong connection to this area. And it means a lot to the residents to know we stand behind our members and the work they do.
We still get questions that pose an enigma. How can I find my great aunt Mae since she remarried and moved, and we don’t know her new name or address? Where can I find a male emu to mate with my female? How many square miles are in Sun City Center?
We don’t always have the answers, but we Google what we can, refer them to another agency if we need to, and try to find an answer. It makes us feel good to know we’re a resource to the community. It’s what we do and why we’re here. And yes, we found Aunt Mae.