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2024 has been a year of change for the Estevan Chamber of Commerce, with a new Executive Director stepping in midway through.
Merissa Scarlett joined into the role during the fall and was immediately thrust into action dealing with forums for the provincial and municipal elections.
She says that the year has gone well, with the chamber celebrating a big milestone.
"Some highlights of the year is that it was our 120th anniversary, so the Chamber has been around since 1904 and that was exciting for us, so we hosted our Southeast Success Summit in May and we had a lot of celebration of regional projects and all that. At our banquet to celebrate 120 years, we hosted the Honorable Scott Moe, the Premier of Saskatchewan, and he announced Esteban as the site of the potential small nuclear reactors."
Stepping out of the role was Jackie Wall, a community member who served the chamber for nearly a decade.
Scarlett says that she's enjoying stepping into the role with some of the advice she's gotten.
"It's been two months and I've really enjoyed running some of the coffee talks that Jackie had set up in her time, getting to know some of our members and then coming in to make it more my own, which is awesome. She left a lot of good resources, a lot of good foundation. So I came in, I had a lot of documentation and a lot of here's what we do, here is when you do it and how to do it. So I think her advice was to make it your own as well as to have fun."
In 2025 Scarlett says they'll keep their work going and she'll see how to better work with the community's businesses.
"I think we're going to continue looking at representing businesses at that local regional level, just continuing moving forward on those things. As far as 2025, my intention is to really connect with our members and really engage with them and see where we're serving them as a chamber and where we're not serving them as a chamber and I'm going to do that through reaching out via phone or in person."
"I will also be planning more events for our members to network and connect at. Our coffee talk has been hugely successful, but a lot of people can't make 8:00 A.M. in the morning. So let's try something at of different time, let's try some lunch and learns and bring some good opportunities to get our businesses able to handle more things and really make Estevan the best place to do business."
Scarlett says that areas such as better tax incentives for businesses both new and growing.