By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(March 8, 2018) The Pocomoke Chamber of Commerce suffered some setbacks last year, but Chamber President Michelle Redinger said the organization is working to bounce back.

Old phone numbers for the chamber have been disconnected and emails as recently as last week were returned with the message, “The Pocomoke Chamber is currently in the process of making organizational changes. There may be a delay in communications from this office. Please bear with us during the transition.”

“We are actually taking a step back and regrouping as a chamber,” Redinger said. “Events like the Cypress Festival and Pocomoketoberfest were canceled this past year. They just weren’t bringing in the money and we were putting out way more money than we were bringing in.”

Instead, Redinger said the chamber would go for a bare bones approach, scaling back and using offices at City Hall temporarily.

City Manager Bobby Cowger confirmed a small office space was provided to the chamber. He said the no funding is being provided currently.

“We’re hoping that eventually we’re going to get our membership up and get money in our account,” Redinger said. “Pretty much at the end of 2017 we were running dry and the city has very graciously reached out to us, so we’ve been using them as a home base. That’s where all our things are now … so we’ve cut out some overhead costs as far as rent.

“Maybe over the next year or two we can regroup and see what kinds of events work for this area and what people want … before we keep putting money out unsuccessfully,” she continued. “We still want to do either monthly or bimonthly business after hours and networking luncheons, so we’re trying to coordinate with some other chambers in the area to get some of their people here or our people there just to network a little bit.”

Another issue, Redinger said, is the lack of an executive director.

“All of the board members, including myself, have full-time jobs, so we have a lot going on and we weren’t able to keep up with the chamber stuff,” she said. “But we have just hired on a new executive director and she just started last week.”

Redinger said the new hire, Betsy Brittingham of Mirror Salon in Snow Hill is in the process of sorting out issues with phones and email. Brittingham will apparently work out of her home and use City Hall offices for meetings.

The chamber is also working on ideas to court new members, potentially including welcome packets with pamphlets from other area businesses, Redinger said.

“We would like to be able to reach out and say, ‘hey, we’re the chamber. Thanks for coming to Pocomoke. We’d love to work with you. If you have any questions or need any other businesses to help you out with anything, just let us know,’” she said.