From Rhonda Bodfield – AZ Star -A group formed to oust the president of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce circulated survey results to the chamber’s board last week, showing 21 percent of respondents said being a member helped their business.
The survey, which went out to the chamber’s 1,500 members, received roughly 140 responses.
Among the findings:
• 75 percent said the chamber didn’t promote their business;
• 23 percent felt the membership fee was a good value;
• 57 percent felt the chamber did not have strong political influence in local government; and
• 27 percent rated the Tucson business climate as good or fair.
Eric Ruden, owner of Essential Pest Management, is the founder of the Tucson First Coalition, which was formed to demand new leadership at the chamber.
He said packets were mailed Tuesday to the executive committee and the board of directors. The group is asking the board for a face-to-face meeting in the next two weeks to air grievances about President Jack Camper and the business climate in general.
Camper countered that the group should have done more to work out its grievances before its splashy public opposition campaign. “It’s a shame they decided to attack the chamber and its leadership before asking for an audience with our board of directors,” Camper said. “We’re just going to continue to run our chamber. We think we’re doing well and we’re continuing on.”
Ruden said he was a chamber member for two years until he gave up his membership in December. Other members of the opposition group’s steering committee are Christine Glanz of Computers, Etc.; Jesse Lugo of Lugo Enterprises; Keith Cooper of AlphaGraphics; former City Council candidate Shaun McClusky of Rincon Ventures; and Gene Hildreth of Allen & Young.
“You join the chamber because you feel you might have networking opportunities, establish contacts and help grow your business,” Ruden said. “But it’s a waste of time. The feedback I’ve got is you don’t get anything out of it.”
He said Albuquerque, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City have more active chambers with more political involvement. Tucson’s chamber, he said, seems more focused on social networking. And while his group lauds the charitable activities conducted by the chamber, it says those should be secondary to fulfilling the needs of the business community.
Ruden said the effort has already produced some results, with the chamber taking a “more active interest” in tackling the city’s sign code regulations, and the board now meeting more often. “That’s starting to show more involvement by the board, so even if we don’t get everything we want, at least they’re doing some of the things we want,” he said.
Camper said his organization has been working on the sign code for a year. “It’s just disingenuous, what they’re doing. They just say whatever they want,” he said.
Chamber board members reached for comment had not yet received the information packets.
Sundt Construction’s Ray Bargull, a member of the executive committee, said he couldn’t comment on the substance, “but in general, I think we’re interested in hearing any information that would help us do a better job.”
Richard Underwood, of AAA Landscape and a member of the board of directors, said he’d be willing to sit down with the group as well. “The first salvo from those guys was a good thing because it made us look at what we’re doing,” he said. “You can always learn from criticism. So yeah, I’m glad they’ve done the survey and I welcome seeing the results. I’m not going to reject it out of hand.”
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 573-4243 or rbodfield@azstarnet.
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8 March 2010
On Friday, March 5th I wanted to attend a TMCC function to see it in action, so for the first time, I had the opportunity to hear the leadership of the TMCC address a meeting. Astonishment was and still is my reaction to what I heard. The leader, sometimes sounding like Elmer Gantry quoting Billy Graham and sometimes looking like an over-amped cheerleader, entered stage right pumping his fist and launched into a red-faced rant telling the audience of both TMCC members and NON-TMCC members they had probably heard there were people looking for his head and “could you believe it, they weren’t even members of TNCC?” (Side Bar: Seriously doubt most of those in attendance had any idea to what he was eluding except me, Ray Bargull of Sundt Construction and maybe some staffers). The leadership assured those in attendance if you were not a member of TMCC, he could give a hoot (Side Bar: I was looking at Mr. Bargull, and I could not tell if he was not a bit taken by such a comment. To me a trait of true leadership is to reach out and to state your convictions in ways to persuade other to join with you. It become clearly understandable why there has been such fractionalization a drop in membership under the current leadership. The leadership of TMCC continually demonstrates a propensity to cut off the head of the messenger and ignore the message i.e. theirs and Inside Tucson’s Business treatment of the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch report as faulty methodology). The leadership stated, once again, it was his intention to ignore the message and condemn messengers as “Those individual who were angry at him because he defeated Proposition 200 in the last election” (Side Bar: Neither Eric Ruden founder of Tucson First Coalition, or I live where we could even vote on it; however, we both conduct business in Pima County). After telling everyone who wasn’t a member of TMCC of their insignificance, the leadership proceeded to tell his members all that he has done including taking credit for Jonathan Patton’s legislation that was just upheld in court, and that he had to stay up until after 10:00 PM to drive home from Bisbee to attend an F-35 meeting.
What became very clear after hearing the leadership oration, it has become crystal clear to me after three decade long reign the leadership of TMCC considers his track record a badge of merit when, in fact, compared to similar SMSA markets is so bad even if Warren Buffet and Donald Trump were co-leaders of TMCC, we would be calling for their termination too.
My question is who hired him and to they have the authority to replace him? My assumption is he is responsible to the Board of Directors which it is rumored each and everyone was hand selected by the leadership to serve on the board (Side Bar: It might be interesting to request contributions make by these companies above and beyond the annual dues they pay). I am not an attorney, but I believe I am on pretty firm ground when I say a fundamental fiduciary obligation exist between the members of a board and the stakeholders and that oversight of management/job performance/peer review is a core responsibility. Let me name the companies represented on the board of TMCC, and let me ask them point blank, “How long would the top management of your company survive if it lost 50% of it customers over the last decade or so and was voted as one of the least customer friendly firms in America?”
Chairman of the Board
Ray Bargull
Sundt Construction
Gary Clark
Southwest Gas Corp.
Brian Sonnleitner
BBVA Compass Bank
Wendy West
IBM
Randy McDonald
Citi Cards Tucson
John Sundt
1st Deed Funding, LLC
George Favela
Qwest Corporation
Mike Jameson
Tucson Newspapers
Bonnie Allin
Tucson Airport Authority
Jim Arnold
KOLD TV
Barry Bendall
Wells Fargo
Steve Christy
Steve Craddock
Lennar
Wyllstyne Hill
Raytheon
Paul Kappelman
Northwest Medical Center
Wendell Long
Sol Casinos
Zory Lopez
American Airlines
John Low
Asarco
Daniel McGraw
Chase
Mark Mistler
BBVA Compass
Bill Petrella
Westin La Paloma
Wayne Silberschlag
Burlini/Silberschlag, Ltd.
Richard Underwood
AAA Landscape
William Valenzuela
WG Valenzuela Drywall
Why does the board need four bankers with two from the same South American bank, one in New York, one in San Francisco, and NONE headquartered in Tucson or Arizona. They say you are judged by the company you keep. By condoning the performance of TMCC’s leadership these board members are saying mediocrity is acceptable. This certainly might want to make some question why they would ever do business with any of the businesses represented on the board.
So what was it that drove a person just entering his 69th year on this planet and having never been an activist for anything except maybe the next boondocker to join with Eric Ruden, founder of the Tucson First Coalition. I’m a business broker and the December 18, 2009 article that reported Tucson’s dismal position as almost the worst place for operators of small business. Believe me any small business owner who has ever asked himself or herself, “I wonder what I could get if I sold my business?” is effected by such negative reporting. And, then when I read the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce (TMCC) leadership’s response to the article, I new I had to get involved. In my business I can with 100% certainty define customer satisfaction – if I don’t put money in my clients bank account, I will not have a satisfied customer. So, anything that presents an obstacle to my customers becomes my fight too!
Come on TMCC board members, it time to suck in you gut and exercise the responsibility you accepted when you agreed to serve on a board – to make tough decisions. It’s time for new leadership at TMCC. Tucson’s small business owners want and deserve TMCC leadership that does not play ostrich in the face of criticism. We want leadership committed to make TMCC simply the Best in the West! We want someone who will take us from being voted 97 out of 101 WORST places for small business to operate to #1.
Facts are stubborn things. When any group that purports to ‘lead’ shows the kind of decline in membership the Chamber has I’d be curious to know if the same type of leadership of the Chamber would work out in their own businesses. Would Jack Camper be hired by ANY business owner/operator to run anything?
Someone on the Chamber board has to figure out a way to let this dinosaur retire and save face somehow. If not, he will drag the remnants of the this organization and his board into the hole of irrelevance with him.
TMCC board: board of directors are chosen to help lead. Start doing it. Covering Mr. Camper’s tushy is not a benefit to your members or the Tucson biz community.