The Eastern Plains Chamber of Commerce held its monthly meeting March 5. The group nominated officers to fill empty board positions, discussed potential changes to the bylaws and voted to help eastern county residents with high propane rates.Dan Lanotte, owner of Falcon Personal Security, spoke about new security audit services his company provides to Falcon area businesses and organizations. ìSecurity, for this, means anything that can put your business in jeopardy,î Lanotte said. ìIf you forget to de-ice your sidewalks and someone slips and falls and sues you ñ that puts your business in jeopardy.î The company offers a checklist and questionnaire of about 150 items they use to recommend solutions for areas of concern, he said. ìThis isn’t to say if you don’t do these recommendations your business will fail and go into dust,î Lanotte said. ìEvery business has to develop its own level of acceptable risk.îPat Jeffrey, chamber board chairman and pastor of Grace Community Church, said members of the church sewed about 220 pillow cases, which will be taken to the children of Casa Angelina orphanage in Guatemala. ìOur goal is to have two for each kid,î Jeffrey said. ìSeveral of us are going down there on a mission in late March.îThe bylaw committee, led by Ben Kley of Falcon Broadband, reported that the consensus at previous meetings determined no reason to change the chamberís mission statement. Kley said many issues appeared to stem from the length and timing of officer terms. Resignations over the course of each office’s three-year term led to the remaining officers making appointments. ìThrough filling vacancies, we’ve basically gotten off track from our basic election cycle,î Kley said. ìOnce we got off track, our main goal was to get a new election cycle set up.îTom Cline, former chairman, recommended filling existing vacancies immediately so there would be a leadership group in place to oversee the bylaw amendment process. The appointments should be interim positions until the new election, which should be determined by bylaw amendments. ìThe most time-intensive and necessary positions are president and treasurer,î Cline said.The 15 attendees at the meeting selected Ben Kley as chairman of the board, Pat Jeffrey as vice president and Kevin Bornhoft as treasurer. Connie Johnson will remain in her elected president position, and the secretary slot remains vacant.Members discussed the effect of increased propane costs on residents of eastern El Paso County. Carl Finney of the Low-income Energy Assistance Program based in Calhan, Colo., reported that the program’s liquid assets are insufficient to give county residents enough grants to stay warm through the rest of the winter. ìFive-hundred dollars won’t go very far at today’s propane rates,î Johnson said. ìI was hoping we could donate a minimum of $1,000 to the fund from the chamber.î The members agreed to donate $500 in each of two months, as well as committing to plan a fundraiser before next winter.The next meeting will be held April 2 at 7:30 a.m. at Grace Community Church in Falcon.
