Daniel Samess, CEO of the Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on at the Chamber.
A noon luncheon today will discuss the state of the real estate market in the Middle Keys.
Samess said, “We’re excited for our Marathon Chamber of Commerce luncheon today at noon at Castaway Sushi Bar and Grill, excellent of our favorite local restaurants and really excited to have Mr. Brian Schmidt himself, not born and raised, but grew up here, pretty much 98% of his life here in Marathon. So nobody knows the market better than Brian, and he’s going to give us a really good, data driven, unvarnished approach of where the market is, where it has been. How does it compare to last year? Like year over year type stuff. Maybe a little bit of looking ahead. I told Brian, maybe, if you can bring your crystal ball and maybe you could talk about what you’re thinking you might see ahead, as far as real estate, or even should the Fed finally, eventually lower rates. Will that potentially affect our markets and all that good stuff? So real estate is one of our major industries down here, of course, and being an island community, there’s no more land being made, so supply is always short, so it keeps values pretty good so, but it’s important for our business members, locals, residents, to be aware of where the market is, and we want to inform them and educate them on it. So we’re looking forward to Brian coming in and as Brian owns and operates Coldwell Banker Schmidt real estate, who is one of our top level chamber executive members and just a big supporter within our Keys communities up and down the Keys, not just Marathon and really proud to say the Schmidt Charitable Foundation has actually won our humanitarian award for our chamber annual awards in the past for all the great things that his charitable foundation does for locals who literally just need assistance, need help, and it’s a way for them to stay on their feet or get back on their feet.”
The Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce looks to keep businesses informed.
Samess said, “Part of our mission is to educate and inform our 500 plus members and the monthly luncheons that we do are a great opportunity for our members to come join us, get some good food, camaraderie, of course, networking, but also to learn and to just be informed on topics, industries, issues that do directly and even indirectly, affect their businesses, their operations. My thought is always, every month for our luncheons is to get good, informative speakers that kind of hit different genres and areas, but all could strike a good chord with our members to help them. Then we just did our business after hours last Wednesday at Isla Bella Beach Resort, which man that was, I think we had about 120 plus members there. We do those monthly business after hours every month and those are in the evening, and they’re free to attend for members, and it includes free libations and food. Often I tell members it’s hors d’oeuvres, it’s light food. It’s not meant to supplement dinner. But sometimes our members go above and beyond. In Isla Bella, to their credit, just they had a buffet. They had fish tacos. I mean, they had a burger and chicken and fish sliders. They had a make your own Margarita machine, which you got on a fun little bike, and as you gave it a few spins on the pedals, it grinded your own Margarita. We put some videos on our Facebook page. People could check out it. They just really went above and beyond. But it was a great, a great experience for our members to network, to chat. We had a lot of local elected officials there, which we always love connecting our members with them so they have access to them face to face to not just say, hey, how are you doing? How’s the family? But also if they have any issues going on that they want to discuss or make our elective elected officials aware of, we feel that access is very important for our business members and today will also be no exception for that at the luncheon.”
A raffle is coming up to help with scholarships provided by the Chamber.
Samess said, “We came up with the most ingenious name four years ago. It’s called the Big Raffle contest. It is what it says. So it’s our big annual raffle contest. It’s only done once a year. We start it right around now, and we only max it out at 500 tickets. It culminates at our annual chamber awards and installation banquet, which is again at Hawks Key Resort, October 17 on a Friday night. It’s a beautiful plated dinner. People love getting dressed up. It’s business casual, but of course, a lot of people like to get dressed up for it. We give out annual business awards. We install a newly elected chamber board of directors. We say thank you and goodbye to board members going off the board. And then we have a little after party. Do a little dancing, have a little fun, have a few cocktails, maybe a cigar and whatnot. So it’s a fun event, and we draw the winners there. You do not have to be present to win. They are $30 a ticket, or four for 100 bucks. And there’s four prizes, which is really fun. The grand prize, if you are lucky enough, is you have a choice. You can either take a check for $2,000 from the Marathon Chamber, or you could pick one of four vacation packages. We work with a really great company that does nonprofit fundraising, and I know there’s a trip. Three of the options are airfare and hotel for two and even other fun stuff, one’s to New Orleans, one’s to San Diego. One is to Nashville, and then the fourth is a Disney World trip here in Orlando. So that does not include airfare, but it includes hotel stay for, I think, four nights actually, and a gift card for like, up to 500 bucks, which you could use for your passes, whatever parks you want to go to. So you could choose one of those two. Second grand prize is a two night stay up at Bakers K Resort in Key Largo, from our good friends up there, great new resort in the Upper Keys, kind of a fun staycation. Third grand prize is a two night stay at the Marker Resort down in Key West of course, which who doesn’t love going down there. And then fourth is $100 gift card to the Rum House, one of our great local restaurants here in Marathon up in Grassy Key. So really great prizes. It benefits our chamber scholarship fund. And earlier this year, the Board of Directors was really excited to award 10 $1,000 scholarships to Marathon High School seniors and another $5,000 in continuing education grants to Marathon Chamber members, so the big raffle contest helps to support that every year. And anyone could buy a ticket. You could go right online and you’ll find under the Make a Payment, select the raffle ticket. You could pay online, we’ll throw your tickets in the till. Or you could come on in and buy them in person, or we’ll start selling them today at our luncheon, actually, and at the next few events leading up to the awards banquet at Hawks K, which we encourage all of our members to go to. If you’re not a member and you want to attend these things like today, the after hours, the banquet, all the fun stuff and educational things we do and be part of a great organization that helps businesses and gives back, then we encourage you to contact us at the chamber to see about joining.”
What’s going on with cutbacks this year?
Samess said, “The state has their own DOGE department now, so just like at the federal level, a lot of states, and Florida is one of them, where the governor is really employing counties and cities to, I guess you could say trim, excess or fat. I know that’s a loaded word, because this often, sometimes involves friends and people we know in small communities like ours that, like at the county level, may have been released or let go, or I know, a lot of jobs that were vacant are being cut as well, to cut budgets, per directives from the state. So it’s a really tough situation. It’s a bittersweet one, and bitter is probably the bigger word between the two, because, again, these are people we know. These are people’s jobs, professions, livelihoods. So it’s always difficult. From the 10,000 foot view, Marathon Chamber is always an advocate for our city and county and federal taxes to be kept down as low as possible. I mean, looking out for the business community, for business owners, we want taxes as low as possible. We want quality services with that and we expect that from our leaders and to keep to keep costs down because things are expensive enough, especially in the Keys. When we talk about wind and flood insurances and homeowners insurance and cost of living and real estate and groceries and everything else, even though fuel and certain things are down, which is great to see, it’s still, food costs have been going up, since the pandemic and that is what it is within reason, as supply and staffing gets difficult in other areas around the country. So it’s our job to keep costs as low as possible, and I think a big part of that are our local taxes. So we understand COLA and cost of living, people have to be paid according to that as inflation ticks, here and there. So those are logical things we understand and expect. But at the same time, we want local governments to be as efficient and effective as they can. The county has been making a lot of tough decisions, which are not easy, for sure, but that’s part of the job as an elected official is to look out for the best interest. We hate to see a lot of the Human Services Fund cut, but that’s also where it’s up to the community to hopefully step up, and the private sector to hopefully step up where we can. I was at that meeting where the county commission had to make those cuts, and you can see the stress on their faces in doing so. But at the same time, I looked at that as an opportunity. How can the Marathon Chamber pick up a little bit of the slack? Is there some creative programs that we could employ and utilize to help bridge that gap for a lot of our great nonprofits like AHEC, CARE and others that are now going to see their budgets cut substantially in some cases. So how could we help them? Because they do provide great services to our community that affect our business owners and affect the people that work for our business members. So it all is very much so connected and related. So we’re going to be looking to come up with some stuff, and I think it’ll help. Again, I see that as an opportunity through a challenging time.”
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