An Important Message from the Chamber President

January 15, 2010

65 employees were finally and permanently laid off at Borrego Ranch and Montesoro last Friday. This brings a long, slow bleeding of good jobs at these two properties to an end. I estimate 100-110 jobs have been lost there in the last 12 months. This is a large percentage of total valley jobs, and some of the better-paying ones. A tough blow.

I was invited to attend the meeting held by the San Diego Workforce Coalition at the Ranch last Friday morning where terminated employees were informed about support available to them through various government agencies. The bottom line? Beyond unemployment, not much...

Our local economy has been losing work hours and jobs during the last 18 months. The macro-economy is at least a year away from creating new jobs. Many of our local families have been barely hanging on. If we want to see these workers and their families move out, we need take no action. If we want them to stay, we need to find ways to assist them using our local resources.

Here are some ideas which have been put forward:

• encourage people and businesses to put people to work on improvement projects
• create and publicize a skills inventory posting on the Chamber website – what types of talents and skills are now unemployed, who possesses them, and how to contact them
• organize area employers to conduct background interviews (in the absence of job interviews)
• organize / subsidize transport for attending free vocational re-training programs available "over the hill"
• provide vocational re-training here in Borrego

I'm calling on you for your creative contributions – what resources are you aware of? What ideas do you have? How can you or those you know help? Whom can you involve?

The board of the Chamber of Commerce will be discussing this at our regular meeting next Tuesday morning at 8:00 A.M. I'd love to share your ideas and input there. Better yet, you're welcome to attend. Call me, drop me an email -- let's see what we can pull together to address this.

The time for action is now.

all the best - Rich

Rich Caldwell, President
Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce
786 Palm Canyon Dr

PO Box 420
Borrego Springs, CA 92004-0420