Longmont Loses Two Economic Leaders

Within the past couple weeks, the heads of the Longmont Area Visitors Association and the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce have left. LAVA Director Beth Witzak was tossed by that organization's advisory Board and Kathy Millisor, president and CEO of the Chamber resigned on Tuesday. Read more in the Times-Call here and here.

Millisor had been encouraged by Witzak to pursue the Chamber job back in 2005. The timing of Millisor's resignation, abrupt and without detail, makes me wonder if she perceived Witzak's firing as too unjust to ignore. And while the Chamber deals with that unexpected leadership change, the Times-Call notes today that the upstart, 2-yr-old Longmont Small Business Association expects its annual Summit to have "dramatically higher participation" than last year as that organization grows. Their summit is Saturday, 9:00 - 2:00 at the Radisson and features a keynote from Michael Shuman, an author of the anti-big-box book "The Small-Mart Revolution".

It's a good sign in general when the economic organizations in a town show the raw impacts of competition and market forces. They'll all be stronger for it.