Chamber asks for $10,000 to provide visitor services

By Kara Chalmers

The Saratoga Chamber of Commerce, at its joint meeting on May 9 with the City Council, presented a draft contract for providing visitor services. The two organizations have not had an agreement in writing since 1997.

Chamber officials and interim city manager Bill Norton will now iron out the details of the contract, including the price tag for the Chamber's visitor information center, Norton said. He said he would take the final draft to the Council for approval in late June.

In a letter to Norton dated April 25, Abby Krimotat, the Chamber's executive director, asked the city to increase the sum to $10,000 annually. The city now pays $3,344 per year. Krimotat says that is not enough to fund the promotion work that she and her staff do for the city.

The council is now in the middle of the budget process for fiscal years 2000-2001 and 2001-2002.

The city also allows the Chamber to rent its building for $1 per year and the city pays for some expenses for Celebrate Saratoga!--a festival that the Chamber stages every September. But since the last signed contract was allowed to expire in June 1997, when the city had a different manager and the chamber had a different executive director, there are no guarantees in place. The Chamber wants to put the arrangement in writing.

The draft contract does not contain a specific sum. According to Krimotat, she asked for an amount and now it is up to the council to decide how much. She said she is very hopeful of receiving the entire amount, or a substantial increase, since there hasn't been an increase since 1995.

She said she needs to concentrate her efforts on Chamber business, and said that if the city increases the funding, she could hire someone part time to handle city promotion.

At the joint meeting on May 9, Councilman Nick Streit suggested the city and the Chamber jointly recruit businesses into Saratoga and retain existing ones. The city has already allocated $100,000 in the draft budget to fund an economic development coordinator for this purpose.

In a later interview, Streit said he would support increasing the amount the city pays the Chamber to $10,000 if the Chamber agrees to work with the coordinator. "I think a $7,000 increase is a small price to pay if the Chamber will be an integral part in relaying the economic coordinator's program to all businesses in Saratoga," Streit said.

Norton said that if the council is interested in partnering with the Chamber in business recruitment and retention, that provision could be part of the final contract.

"It makes sense to work together," Krimotat said. She noted, though, that the environment in Saratoga must be amicable to businesses for a partnership to work.

When asked if the funding increase would result in a kind of "subsidization" of the Chamber by the city, Krimotat said no.

"To retain and recruit is different from advocating," she said, noting that she already promotes the city; she is just asking for more money to do so.

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