Season's greetings to you and yours!
As we head into the holiday season I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the Board of Trade’s accomplishments this past year as well as our plans for the year ahead.
2017 has definitely been a year of change as we welcomed Karen Mortfield, our new Executive Director. She has come to the Board of Trade with a mandate to build on the Board’s strengths and to focus our efforts on supporting our members, including through promoting targeted networking and educational opportunities.
We want to continue to improve the range and quality of benefits available to our members so that membership in the Richmond Hill Board of Trade becomes the obvious choice for every local business.
We’ve had some great successes this year, including the coordinated Board of Trade/Chamber response to proposed federal tax changes that would have had a painful impact on our small and mid-sized businesses. Our efforts were helpful in convincing the federal government to roll back roughly 70% of the proposed tax changes, which was great news.
2018 promises to be even more exciting, with both provincial and municipal elections coming up. We will, as always, organize candidate debates in all Richmond Hill ridings and wards. We’ll also be sharing as much information as possible with our members on the policy positions of all candidates. We look forward to your enthusiastic participation in our all-important democratic process.
Please also keep a couple of special dates in mind: March 1st is the 2018 Business Achievement Awards, which is shaping up to be a spectacular event. If you haven’t attended in a while, this will definitely be the year to make a return appearance! We will be choosing our winners from an impressive field of candidates and honouring the business excellence for which Richmond Hill is known.
The second date to keep in mind is June 25th – our annual Golf Tournament. After a couple of years of September events, we’re returning to a tournament earlier in the golf season, as our members have requested. We’re looking forward to seeing you at Angus Glen Golf Club!
We’re also looking forward to seeing you at more great RHBOT events in 2018, and to creating new ways of helping you and your business succeed. As always, please let me or Karen Mortfield know if there is anything we can do to help you.
Wishing you and your loved ones a safe, happy and successful 2018.
