Lake City Chamber of Commerce

Happy New Year! What a great time to live and work in Lake City! What an even better time to be a Lake City – Columbia County Chamber Member! We have a new executive committee, as well as two new board members. Please welcome the new executive board: Joel Foreman, President, John Kuykendall, President-Elect and Joy Lizotte, Treasurer, as well as our two new board members: Bruce Drawdy and Jimbo Haley.  I, along with the 2013 Board of Directors, am looking forward to continuing to work on our three year strategic plan. Our specific area from our plan we will focus on for 2013 is workforce development. We will be meeting with school officials in the Columbia County School System, Florida Gateway College, as well as both large and small businesses, to see how we can all come together to create a labor ready workforce in our community.

We will host our first Chamber Mixer of the year on Thursday, January 24^th from 5:00-6:30pm at Lake City Medical Center. This is a great opportunity to network with the local business community. This also leads up the annual Chamber Ball weekend, which will take place on Friday and Saturday January 25^th and 26^th. If you are a golfer, we invite you to come and play in our golf tournament sponsored by GulfCoast Financial Services on Friday, January 25^th at noon at the Country Club of Lake City. Entry fee is $60 and includes lunch and many other fun surprises. We have a few spots left, so if you are interested, please contact the Chamber as soon as possible. Saturday, January 26^th at 6:00pm we will be hosting our Chamber Ball dinner sponsored by Rountree – Moore Automotive Group. We are pleased to announce that we sold out of dinner tickets three weeks before the event! We are very thankful to our members who continue to support us over the Chamber Ball weekend. We are still looking for silent auction items if you have a product or service that you would like to expose in front of the 376 chamber members who will be in attendance. It is a great way to market your business and all of the proceeds go to help our chamber grow and thrive.

2013 is going to be a great year for Lake City and Columbia County. Your Chamber of Commerce is ready to do our part to welcome the changes and growth to our community! As the old saying goes, it takes two -   the chamber and you! If you are a business owner or private individual that would like to take a more active role in shaping our community and business environment, we welcome you to consider membership. We would love the opportunity to tell you what the Lake City – Columbia County Chamber of Commerce can do for you. Stop by and see us, visit our website – www.lakecitychamber.com, give us a call 752-3690 or follow us on Facebook for the latest Chamber events and information.