President’s Weekly Update: December 16

Members of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce:

 

We wish you all a blessed Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah and a wonderful New Year. This will be my final President's Update for 2020. It has been an interesting year — full of challenges, sorrows and successes. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, I was of the firm belief that challenging times build strong communities and that San Angelo would pull together and help each other. I was convinced that we would ultimately prevail as a stronger and better community. Often, I have said, in good times and bad there is no where on earth that I would rather be than San Angelo, Texas.

 

As we are moving to the close of this chapter in our history, we can all reflect on what has happened this year. We have indeed seen our community come together to help each other. We supported our local businesses, and our economy and sales tax revenue intake were relatively stable. Our financial institutions worked overtime to support the rollout of federal programs in support of our small businesses. Our city leadership and health professionals came together to quell the pandemics surges and to care for those afflicted. Our learning institutions, through hard work and innovation brought their students back the classroom. Your Chamber of Commerce experienced seven consecutive months of net membership growth. The San Angelo Gives campaign exceeded its fundraising targets. We also grieved together through the loss of many of our own. I believe that we are indeed stronger and more unified for having shared these hardships and successes.

 

On the economic development front, we have seen many local businesses expand and new businesses come to town. We now have a new freight rail port that will catalyze economic growth in our community for years to come. We are back in the lamb processing business after a 15-year hiatus. We are seeing the expansion of renewable energy projects across our county and the pipeline of new projects is large and growing. We are indeed positioned well for a great future.

 

2021 will certainly be a year of recovery and restoration. We will continue to grieve those we have lost as we work together to create bright future. At the Chamber we are energized to continue to bring new programs and services to our membership and to our community. We will continue to be committed to your success and we will always strive to be incredibly responsive to you and to continually work to become ever-increasingly relevant to your business needs. We see great thing coming and the entire Chamber staff is excited to work with you to make them happen.

 

We will always remember 2020. The memories in many ways will be bittersweet. My wife MG and I will always be grateful for 2020. We will always remember it as the year that we came to join this wonderful community. We wish you and your families a blessed holiday season.

 

Stay safe and be joyful. We look forward to seeing you all in 2021.

 

 

Walt Koenig
President/CEO
San Angelo Chamber of Commerce
walt@sanangelo.org
(321) 474-1332