LG Chamber President Robin Tole
By Dale Bryant
In a letter dated Aug. 12, 1996, and mailed to everyone in Los Gatos who holds a business license, the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce introduced itself, listed the benefits of membership and invited recipients to become charter members of the new chamber, organized less than a year ago as an affiliate of the San Jose Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
Among the benefits it touts is this one: "To become stronger organizations, the Chamber, the Downtown Association and the Community Boulevard Alliance have come together under one umbrella, The Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce."
At a chamber breakfast last week, Town Chamber President Robin Tole announced the same benefits, including the unification of the three organizations.
While many in the audience expressed approval, a few--including those who ought to know--scratched their heads and wondered when all that came about. Asked if he was surprised to hear about the unification, LGDA board member Gary Schloh, who was at the chamber breakfast, said: "You know, I wanted to ask about that. When she said it was a done deal, I was surprised."
Shirley Henderson, a downtown association board member, had missed the group's July board meeting because she was out of town; she wondered if the decision had been made in her absence. But Barbra Toren, former executive director of the LGDA, who did attend that July board meeting--the most recent formal board meeting the organization has held-- insisted that a vote to become a part of the chamber "never happened."
Steve Boersma, executive pastor for administration at Calvary Church and chairman of the Los Gatos Boulevard Community Alliance, said that the BCA's executive committee has met with chamber representatives and is leaning toward alliance. "But it certainly isn't official from the BCA's point of view," he told the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
In fact, he said: "It concerns me that it would be reported as a done deal because we have a constituency that doesn't yet know how the executive committee feels. If there were a backlash, we'd have to be responsive to them."
Linda Asbury, San Jose Chamber liaison to the Town Chamber, said she couldn't understand why board members of the two organizations were surprised. "It's true we don't have memorandums of understanding, but what we do have is the approval of their boards," she told the Weekly-Times.
She pointed to the recent appointment of Boersma to the Town Chamber board and the fact that Kurt Lemons is already on the boards of both the chamber and the LGDA as further evidence that unification is a done deal except for the formality of memorandums of understanding.
Asbury said it was Lemons who told the Town Chamber board that unification had been approved by the LGDA. And Lemons says he's certain approval was given at the July board meeting, but others say only an informal discussion took place, with most saying it seemed like it might be a good idea, especially in light of the resignation of Toren and the organization's empty bank account.
Even more mysterious than the announcement that the three organizations have merged is the diverse views on how the merger would work. At issue is whether the San Jose Chamber is merely providing an umbrella over the boulevard group and the LGDA or if the San Jose group is actually absorbing the two grassroots, narrowly focused organizations.
Boersma said the chamber's attraction is that it has resources the BCA can use, and even though he understands that the chamber would like to see everyone who participates in the BCA join the chamber, he told the Weekly-Times it won't be a requirement. "A stipulation we would make before agreeing to unification is that we have to be a subcommittee. We don't want to lose our identity and pay dues to the chamber."
LGDA members are also concerned about their identity and don't envision that paying the approximately $300 chamber dues would be required of them to be active in the LGDA. Longtime BCA beautification Chairwoman Shirley Henderson said she has no plans to join the chamber. "What I want is to get our group going again. I don't fit in with [the chamber]. Besides, if I'm going to give money, I want it to go to downtown," she said.
Even Lemons, who believes it would be "a nice idea" for LGDA members to become dues-paying members of the chamber, insisted it wouldn't be mandatory.
But Asbury said she can't understand how anyone could think that chamber dues wouldn't be part of the deal. "I'm not going to show up and take minutes and send them out for free," she told the Weekly-Times. And to the suggestion made by some members of the BCA and LGDA that chamber membership dues might be designated to the preferred organization, she responded: "The money would go into the general fund and be budgeted from there."
The San Jose Chamber is the fiscal agent for the Los Gatos Town Chamber.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, September 4, 1996.
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