Another Great Grand Lake Weekend
We have had another Great weekend
here on Grand with folks on all corners of the lake enjoying friends, family
and fellow boaters. Activity did not
stop until late Sunday evening which was a perfect weather day with soft
northerly breezes to cut down on the humidity.
This has been a jam packed month for the pond.
DAM TOURS
Forrest Graham gave me the latest
on the dam tour count and as of Sunday the number is 6248 and holding with 15
countries represented and folks from 43 states. The countries are: Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Guam, Germany,
India, Ireland, Kuwait, Norway, Poland, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Ukraine,
United Kingdom and West Africa. They
all enjoyed the new video of the dam history and all the information given by
all the tour guides. They should break
the record this week for last year’s numbers and still several weeks to go,
come and get on the list of visitors it is an experience.
CONGRESS DOES SOME GOOD
With the passage of the Wall
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act there are three provisions of
significant interest to businesses that should help with profitability.
·
Effective July 22nd, merchants can set minimum
amounts for credit card transactions as long as it does not exceed $10 per
transaction.
·
Effective July 22nd, merchants can offer
customers discounts for payment made with cash, checks, debit cards or credit
cards, as long as the discount is offered to all customers and is clearly
disclosed to the extent required by federal and state law.
·
The Federal Reserve has until April 2011 to issue
regulations to ensure the interchange fees on debit card transactions are
“reasonable and proportional” to the cost incurred by the card user. The regulations will take effect July
2011. This should significantly reduce
interchange fees on debit card transactions.
These new provisions are
significant for businesses of all kinds that accept debit and credit cards in
their daily operations.
The
Senate should vote soon on a Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 that could provide
small businesses with tax relief and help getting access to capital. The bill would expand capital expensing
limits for small businesses and also extend bonus depreciation, which expired
at the end of last year. The bill would
also make enhancements to Small Business Administration loans, increasing
maximum loans from $2 million to $5 million, eliminating fees and extending the
government’s 90 percent guarantee through 2010. And there is hope that the bill would include permanently
lowering estate taxes.
MEMBER BENEFITS
We are pleased to announce a new
member benefit for our chamber investors, the Grand Lake radio Network and the
Chamber are offering discounts to members that would like to use this new
online radio network to reach new customers.
The online network features music from the 70’s and 80’s and will soon
have weather and news reports, so while you are at your computer or other hand
held device you can get a local radio network.
The address is grandlake.onlineradio247.com. The difference with this
audio advertising is they can tract listeners and have solid counts instead of surveys that come out
months after you advertised. Call Lora
at the office for more information or send here an email at admin@gradnlakechamber.org
HAVE A GREAT GRAND DAY!!!