WILLIAMS - Members of the newly formed Williams Merchants Association (WMA) met for their first meeting Nov. 9 in the ballroom of the Grand Canyon Hotel on Route 66. According to Diana Croteau, executive director of the newly formed association, the group hopes to be up and running by January. She said their first proposed event could take place by spring of next year.
Croteau said the overall goal of the group is to improve and increase a guest's experience in Williams, thereby increasing potential revenue for local merchants and helping build on the city's sales tax income.
"Our goals are to work with existing promotions and events and encourage and support existing city officials to facilitate events," Croteau said. "We are hoping, with our membership and host income, to do a lot of different events. Some of the events that we have talked about is to do an Escalante 10k, we're looking at bike races, triathlons, mountain climbs, downtown art walks, more parades. We'd like to do a Route 66 calendar, laser light shows, bring in some concerts."
Other ideas mentioned during the WMA meeting included fly-ins, rodeos and Route 66 rallies, business seminars and job fairs.
"The job fairs will not just entail Williams, but the outlying areas like Flagstaff," Croteau said.
She added that many of the ideas would be discussed in greater detail when a board is formed for the organization. She added that city council and chamber of commerce officials would not be involved in running the proposed events. The events, she said, would be different than events already held by the Chamber.
"We don't have any iron clad events set right now, because we need to put our board in place first," Croteau said, adding that the association will not officially begin until Jan. 1. She said board members for the WMA will be chosen via applications.
When it comes to membership, Croteau said all money would go into promotions and events.
"We're going to have five different memberships," she explained. Memberships will include retail, affiliate member, ally members, host members (made up of sponsoring parties) and ultimate host. Costs will range from about $100 a year to about $5,000 a year for larger hosts.
"We are going to set up a board of directors," Croteau said. "There will be four board meetings a year. We're not going to do one every month. We'll have four board meetings a year and one open meeting in November, so there will be a total of five meetings a year."
Volunteers, she said, would be paid for their efforts.
"We're trying to avoid asking people to volunteer anymore because that's a conception issue and it's time consuming," Croteau said. "We're looking at paying our board members $100 for every meeting that they attend, so it's like $400 a year and then, if they attend the yearly one, that would be another $100. For the events, we're not going to ask for volunteers, we would like to put together an events staff of probably four to five people that would oversee the event and they would be paid to do that and then it would be their discretion of whether they needed more people to be part of that. We're looking at paying those people a minimum wage salary to help with the economy here, because people really can't afford to give their time anymore like they used to, so we're hoping that with paying them a minimum wage to be a part of these events that it will encourage more people to be a part of it."
Chamber of Commerce Events Coordinator Sue Atkinson told those at the Nov. 9 meeting that she appreciated what the organizations hoped to accomplish.
"I think this is a wonderful thing," Atkinson said.
For more information on the WMA, contact Croteau at (928) 607-0123.
