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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Our guest for this episode is Sheriffa Jones. Sheriffa is the Executive Director for the Spencer Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber foundation. Sheriffa has more than two decades of varied experience in fundraising and Community and Economic Development. She graduated from Iowa State University with a BA in Art and Design in and in 2006 she graduated from the University of Oregon with an MS in history preservation and a minor in nonprofit management. In January 2025 she received her IOM designation from the US Chamber of Commerce in her free time, Sheriffa enjoys being outside, hiking, kayaking, landscaping and gardening. She’s a foodie and loves photography. Sheriffa and her husband have two children and a black lab. Sheriffa, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Sheriffa Jones 2:07
Yes, hello, and thank you so much for having me. Yes, as you mentioned, I live in Iowa, and I think it’s always interesting to be able to share with people how different Iowa is and a very landscape. Something interesting about me personally is that I am one of nine children, and I always preface that with Yes, we are all from the same parents as well. So I’m the third oldest, which might have a little bit to do with some of the things that I end up taking on and some of the roles I take on in my professional career. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 2:41
say those Midwest families that you can you need help around the the house and the farm and everything, and you know, it’s cheap labor. I guess it’s not really cheap, but that’s what they say. So anyways, tell us a little bit about the Spencer Chamber of Commerce, just to give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Yeah,
Sheriffa Jones 3:07
absolutely. So the Spencer chamber, we serve about 370 businesses, give or take, and we are the only chamber in our county. So Spencer, Iowa, has a population of about 11,000 and as I mentioned, we serve about 360 businesses. Our county is a population of about 16,000 so we are the only chamber within Clay County, and so we really consider ourselves a county wide chamber. Obviously, we also serve businesses that are outside of our county, even outside of the state of Iowa. So Spencer is, as I mentioned, in Clay County. In Clay County is in northwest Iowa, so we’re pretty close to the Minnesota and South Dakota border, to give you a little bit of perspective there. So as far as staff size, we have, I will say five staff, three full time. And so that also includes we do the tourism for Clay County, and so we have a full time tourism and marketing coordinator in our office. We have an office coordinator, and then an events and programs coordinator as well an additional staff person we have is actually a collaboration between our school district and us. The school district has had a really pretty aggressive Work Based Learning program, I would say, for 10 to 15 years. And the last three years we have been collaborating with them, and we are in our second year of financially, we have an investment in that staff person. So it is a school district employee, but they spend half of their time about in our office. So it helps to create those connections with, you know, high school students and and even younger, with the business community. So that’s a position we have. And then we have a contractor that comes in and does our bookkeeping, um. For accounting purposes and things like that, which has been really beneficial. Budget wise, we have a budget about $350,000 on the chamber side, the foundation side, which is pretty new, a budget of about 120 240,000 and our foundation is fairly new. That was started in 2017 and with many things, especially in 2020 we really started using our foundation, and I’ll talk a little bit later on as well, in terms of how we’ve been using it most recently. So yeah, that’s a little bit about the Spencer chamber and what we do
Brandon Burton 5:34
good. I love hearing that you guys have a foundation, and that it’s new. And I’m sure as you talk through there’s going to be some lessons, as you know, setting up a foundation as well that can be shared, but more than anything, the impact that having a foundation can have. And I hope we can pull some of that into our conversation today, but we’re going to focus the majority of our discussion today around when disaster strikes in your community. And I know you guys had a flood recently in 2024 and we’ll have you share what that experience was like, not to bring up bad memories or anything, but lessons learned ways you’re able to lead through that experience as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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All right, Sheriffa, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about when disaster strikes in your community. If you could give us kind of the overview of the flood in your community, what happened, how things unfolded. Just tell us a story. Yeah,
Sheriffa Jones 9:49
absolutely. So it’s always interesting looking back on a situation. So I’ll preface this with, as I mentioned, we are also Clay County Tourism based out of our. This, and for about the last three years, we had been working with the international Red harvesters to have their international event in our community. So we are also home to the Clay County Fair, which has been going for over 100 years, and it is one of the largest tourist attractions in the state of Iowa. So our population is 16,000 as a county, we have over 300,000 people that come to a county fair over nine days. So it is the only county fair that takes place after the State Fair. Therefore our fair grounds are pretty desirable place for large events to take place. So about three years ago, we had started working with the international harvesters, and their event was going to be in June of 2024 so they were going to start, you know, coming into the community, like around June 15 or so, and then their event was going to be going through, I think, like the 23rd so we had about, you know, 20 to 30,000 additional people in our community at the time that the flood hit. And when I say International, absolutely International, one of the best things that happened was I ended up needing to translate for about five French men, and I don’t know a lick of French, and downloaded Google Translate, I’ll put a little plug in there for them. And it was, it was amazing that I had that so not only did it help me in that situation. So that was on Friday, June 21 and the flood really hit our community that Saturday the 22nd you know, the community had had floods in the past, and really, as you look back, had natural disasters in the past, from a fire in 1931 and a flood in 1953 but nothing to this magnitude. So yes, you say flood, but this was a natural disaster. It’s they are comparing what we have experienced in our community somewhere between Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Hugo in terms of the percentage of damage, the amount of damage to homes, businesses, things like that. So the flood, not knowing what it was going to become. But on Saturday, June 22 I reported to the fire department, and very quickly, many of our community facilities became impacted. We are also the county seat in Clay County. This impacted our fire station, our city hall, our police station, our comm Center, our utility. We have a municipal utility, school building, so every sector was impacted from the flood, and very quickly, we had to move our our EOC, our Emergency Operations Center, from the fire department to City Hall, and from the City Hall to our community college, and then that became and kept that main that was our EOC throughout the duration of the early flood efforts. So yeah, it’s really was a perfect storm, in a sense, we had been getting lots of rain throughout our community, but ultimately, it’s the watershed that really you need to look at in any type of situation. It’s not just what’s the immediate What are you seeing, but what’s happening around you as well, and I would say in any situation, especially any natural disaster. So our watershed was just consistently getting a lot of rain, probably from April, obviously, all the way through the end of June, even, and anything from two to three inches every couple of days. We had one community in our watershed that received, I think, between seven and nine inches of rain in one you know, 24 to 48 hour period, give or take. And so it was saturated. The ground was saturated. And then ranges continued to come and and what we found out from the Iowa flood center is that, you know, had this system shifted 20 miles to the north, it would have been different, and had it shifted 20 miles to the south, it would have been even worse. But it kind of just it was stagnant in our area, which considered continued to obviously dump more rain in our area, as I said, already saturated. We also have two river systems that come through our community, one of them the O cheat and river comes into and joins the little Sioux River about 300 yards or so, give or take, just to the west of Spencer, and that river has really not been studied very much, and so that really created a lot of the differences compared to the 1953 flood. So essentially, the flood hit in the early morning hours of Sunday or of Saturday, June 22 and it was beyond what anyone ever would have imagined. You know, the National Weather Service kept saying, Nope, you’re going to crest at this and you’re going to crest, you know, and the next day, and we crested ahead of schedule, and, you know, about five feet above what was anticipated. Um. It really impacted about 75% of our buildings. So we have about 5100 buildings in Spencer, and it impacted between 75 and 80% of those buildings. So residential as well as commercial. As I mentioned, every sector was impacted. We still we are what, seven months post flood, we still have a school building that is obviously not being able to be used, and so three classes that are then combined in other buildings, fire station, police station, they are back in there, but our communication system really continued to be a challenge, I would say, for three to four weeks post disaster when it actually struck and and it’s continues to be a situation that we’re very mindful of. We run 911, for our county as well out of our communication system. You know, there’s lots of questions one could ask about disaster, and certainly about a flood. A lesson that I have, I would say, is this is a real opportunity for chambers to be a leader, regardless of the type of disaster, and from so many different perspectives, chambers are considered trusted. They are a trusted entity in the community. Generally, many of us, if not all of us, have a really good database, and we know the players, and that was, I think, really key, and it’s an aspect that I’m really proud of for our chamber, in that at the drop of a hat, when it was, hey, we need a shelter, I was able to pick up the phone and call one of our churches, and hey, we need another shelter. Our community was split into two. And kind of even we had water in the north side, we had, you know, part of our community, business and residents. And then we were split again. The river was going through. We couldn’t traverse the river because the current was so strong. And then we had another part of our community. And keep in mind, we had about 20,000 extra visitors in our area at that time, some of them not, obviously not familiar, and also that spoke a different language.
Brandon Burton 17:11
Yeah. So with some situations, with floods, you get some sort of a warning, you know, if there’s a dam that’s about to be breached, or something like that, and you can kind of prepare for that. It doesn’t sound like there was a whole lot of warning. Maybe there was some false hope that was being perpetuated that it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. Nope, it’s not okay. Was there a plan in place to activate, or how is, how did that come together? And is there thoughts of a plan going forward after this experience, absolutely.
Sheriffa Jones 17:43
So what I will tell you is that, you know, Spencer had a flood in 1953 not many people are around from that, but many times throughout any spring, we will, oh, you know, the river’s out of the banks, you know, and there’s kind of a little park there where it can kind of overflow into and it’s always been kind of a barometer of, Oh, yep, the river’s out of the banks. And so we as residents, I think everyone became desensitized when it would be like, oh, there’s a flood warning. Yep, there’s a flood warning. This was beyond a flood. This was like, beyond your wildest dreams. Could not have imagined having eight feet of water running through your community and into buildings. So in terms of the scope of it there, there was no idea that this was going to impact the community the way it had, because it had never happened, and because also so much within the watershed was not understood going forward. Yes, there is a plan to study more of the area through the Iowa flood center, and so that will definitely help and mitigation efforts and studies are in process, but they all do take some time, for sure, but we definitely learned several things in this situation, and could some of it had been avoided, not necessarily, you know, could there have been more warning potentially. But what I will say is, we even had law enforcement, police officers, firefighters, that were going door to door, telling people, Hey, you need to get your stuff. You need to get out. Nope, nope, I’m fine. Nope, I’m fine. And then probably within a half hour, 45 minutes later, they were going back with boats and rescuing those same people. And so just the magnitude, and you know, the metric that we had to say, Well, yeah, it’s it’s flooded before, and we knew what that looked like. And this was beyond anyone’s Wildest Dreams it. And which is why wasn’t just flooding, it was a disaster. There were about seven to 800 boat rescues on Saturday, people coming from over two hours away with boats to help with rescuing as well.
Brandon Burton 19:51
Wow. So I’m intrigued with the 20,000 or so out of towners that were there in Spencer and because. Disaster can strike a community at really any time. You know, whether it be a tornado or a flood, in this case, or even a train derailment. You know, not knowing what, what the train’s hauling. It could be a it could be a disaster, for sure, but when you have this influx of people, you talked about using Google Translate, but where were they staying? How do you guys manage where they go? How, how are these people taken care of? Did they just try to get out of town as quickly as they could? Like, what happened? Yeah,
Sheriffa Jones 20:30
absolutely, you know. So one of the things that was a benefit to us is that we knew that the majority of people would be there, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And so Friday, it was raining. I was actually just looking back at some text messages. We had received some more severe thunderstorm warning messages through our alert system as well. So some of them were staying at our fairgrounds, so they are in campers. So then also, we’re curious, okay, well, how do we warn them if there’s a tornado or something else that’s coming through? Not knowing, but many of them were also staying in other outlying communities because our hotels were full. We’re about 15 miles to the south of a popular vacation tourist destination as well. So many of those hotels were full. So communities outside of Spencer were being used, which was probably a little bit of a saving grace. You know, it was happening in the morning, so people weren’t necessarily in town at the event. Yet, many people couldn’t even get to our community at that time because some of the roads had already started to flood as well. Again, we still had no idea what the magnitude was going to be. You know, best takeaway is having those communication systems even leading up to an event of this scale, that people know, hey, this is happening and what to expect. So we had been communicating with the community and with leaders for the last three years about the size of the event. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 21:55
it’s when I think of that many people in from out of town hotels full, and then you’re talking about all these people being displaced from homes and businesses and so forth too, trying to figure out where to go. Was there a role that the Chamber played with that and trying to get people put up somewhere, or the leadership role that a chamber can take in a situation like this is so broad, but I’d like to know some more that the ways that you guys are able to step in as leaders and make those connections and and help these people out.
Sheriffa Jones 22:29
Yeah, absolutely. So ultimately, this happened on a Saturday, so all of all of the chamber staff were home. Every chamber staff was impacted personally as well. So they’re all home. I was able my house stayed dry. I was able to make it to the fire department and then continue on through the EOC process of moving. So yes, we did, as the chamber played a role in setting up shelters. So at one point we had as many of six, as many as six shelters set up because the need continued to grow, and so we had to, you know, open up additional shelters. And so that was really a role that we play, that I played, in terms of having the connections and being able to make those personal phone calls to say, hey, I need you to open up a shelter, and I don’t have any other instructions, and people on the other end saying, yes, absolutely, and you hang up the phone, and then being able to convey that message, hey, faith, Pentecostal, they’re a shelter now. SS collision, they’re a shelter now. CMB equipment, they’re another shelter on the south side, and then being able to know that now we need additional shelters on the north side and and so that was a pivotal role that the Chamber played. And so it’s all of those things. It’s not only the shelter, but oh, now, by the way, someone left their house without their compressed oxygen or without their cancer or their heart medication. How do we get medication to these individuals who don’t have the prescription now and we can’t, it’s not just a five mile drive or a five minute drive, even, because now we can’t get from point A to point B. Now it’s going to take two hours to get this medication to where it needs to go. So we have to be super strategic about that. And you know, so it’s really, it’s it’s having those connections. It’s having a cool, calm and collected head, knowing who you can delegate things to, and then also knowing those things that you really need to do yourself and make sure that they get carried through. And the chamber absolutely plays a key role in in any type of disaster, and can play that role, whether it’s sheltering, you know, we lined up food, we lined up transportation, we then were able to as water receded, working with other entities to then combine all of our shelters down to one. So that involved working with volunteers and getting our community college students together to help, kind of be sort of as concierge as possible when you’re in disaster, to help these individuals who are flood survivors, to then, not only. They’ve moved maybe from their home to a shelter, but now they’re moving from another shelter to a final shelter, and so helping to calm those and knowing people that you can delegate those types of tasks to that are going to do a really a great job and be extremely thoughtful. The other role we placed was, or the other role we played, was helping to set up a food distribution center. So a lot of our community was about electricity. We were without storm water, sewer, and so another church called them and said, We need a distribution center. And we had a connection with the school district to the north of us, and they started bussing in supplies. And so setting up those types of assets that you need in a community, and then empowering people to say, this is what I need you to do, and letting them take it and figuring out how to fully implement that. So really knowing who potential other leaders are in your community, especially in those times of need.
Brandon Burton 25:56
Yeah, I think that’s key, because you can’t, you can’t have your hand in all of it, so to be able to hand it off and know this is somebody I can trust to figure it out and get the job done, that’s huge.
Unknown Speaker 26:06
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Brandon Burton 26:11
So you had mentioned earlier about the communications kind of breaking down, having some issues with that. What Is there any more you can share about that, just so other communities can think ahead of time of where some of these points of failure might be, or to try to find a workaround or ways to be able to get messages out to the community.
Sheriffa Jones 26:31
Yeah. So our communication systems, and I think if the fire chief or the police chief were sitting here with me, they’d, you know, definitely have more details to provide. But our communication system, you know, had kind of just been like, Okay, we’re going to do this, and then we’re going to add this, you know. And that had probably been the the process for, you know, maybe 20 plus years, when it comes down to our 911, system. So that was certainly a challenge. And also water. I mean, floods are the worst if, if you can choose what disaster card you’re going to get. Floods are the worst. And so it did, and it impacted every aspect of that which, you know, caused that to to to not fail. But we had to then reach out to the state to get some assistance, you know, also because of the impact. Then it was, everybody was on their cell phone. And so you know, knowing who your emergency management agent is or your individual, because they have those connections and can reach out to the governor of your state, and they can pull in other types of assets that they know, whether it’s the National Guard or your state patrol. And so getting those phone numbers in your phone, whether you have a work phone or a personal cell phone, positioning yourself into tabletop exercises. We were involved in tabletop exercises. Certainly nothing can prepare you for actually going through disaster. But that would be one of my best pieces of advice. Is, as you’re sitting around in some of those meetings that you’re in, make sure that you have your county supervisor, you have your city manager, your mayor, your EMA, you’ve got, you know, all of those individuals that are leaders at that level, not only having their cell phone number you know in your database, but having their cell phone numbers in your cell phone, because that is absolutely key, as you’re trying to communicate and you’re not in your offices, you know you are, maybe all in one room, or you’re needing to share that contact information with a volunteer who you’re saying, I now need you to stay in contact with this individual so that then You can take that middle man out. It really is having confidence in other people and knowing that if you have silos in your community, you’ve really got to pull those down, because disasters can they can make or break. And in our community, we pull together and have worked together as such a solid team that I could say that to anyone, to their face, that we we work together as a community, as our county, all of the agencies, in that way, I’m extremely proud of of what we were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.
Brandon Burton 29:15
Yeah. So I feel like I have to ask, as we record this in February of 2025 how does the community outlook right now? How’s the recovery looking? What’s going on in the community at this point?
Sheriffa Jones 29:28
Yeah, absolutely. So the flood was June 22 so we’re what, like seven ish months, yeah, um, when people come into the community. And as I mentioned earlier, we have this little thing called the Clay County Fair, and that happens in September of every year. We knew we needed, we wanted to put on a good showing for everyone who was coming, and we did. We maybe even cleaned up too good, but we look good as a community. Okay, you could drive through our community. We’ve got highway 71, and 18 that both come through our state, a state and or through our community, a state and a federal highway, and we look good. There’s a few buildings that are not that are going to be demolished because of where they’re located. There’s a few that still have plywood on Windows because the owners haven’t decided what they’re going to do, but we look amazing, and some of that is absolutely due to the Iowa D O T. They have a disaster response team that came in and and they are, if anybody has anything bad to say about D O T, this crew did the most amazing job, and they were so fantastic to work with. You get a block or two blocks off of a main street, and you definitely can see still the impact to residential areas. You know, at night time it’s it’s still kind of eerie. There’s still areas where your street lights aren’t on. There’s still plenty of houses that people aren’t living in we do have people living in the hotel still. We still have people who are we have some manufactured housing units which are brought into our community through FEMA. So we still have people living in those as well. Recovery from a disaster of this magnitude, our community is forever changed, and recovery is going to be ongoing in 510, years in terms of how we rebuild and what our community looks like, and and I think from a chamber perspective too, that’s another role that you can play and and helping your community dream about what’s not only what is our community now, but what do we want Our community to be in 2025, 30 years, and that’s really that visioning component that chambers can help with.
Brandon Burton 31:46
Yeah, I love that you brought that part, that aspect, into it. So thank you. Yeah, I like asking everyone I have on the show, for those listening who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item that you share with them to try to implement that goal?
Sheriffa Jones 32:03
Yeah, I’m so glad that you asked that, so I try to think of internal and external. So what can you do internally with your staff, with yourself, with your board, and mine would be investing in professional development, making sure that you can consistently elevate that leadership lid that either you have or that of your staff. And I can’t speak highly enough about the Institute for organization management, it’s through the US Chamber. It’s really an incredible program. It’s one that empowered me. The the foundation was in place before I came. That was started in 2017 I came to the chamber about six months before COVID hit, and that foundation was so critical for us to position ourselves to help our community during COVID, and has now also positioned ourselves so strategically to help our community now In disaster recovery, and it has helped position our chamber really well, somewhat selfishly, but really well, I feel like in our community for years to come, all because we have that foundation, and I learned on ways to use that foundation strategically through IOM so again, invest in professional development. From an external perspective, it comes down to if what’s going on outside your doors is changing faster than what’s going on inside your doors. Make sure that you’re keeping up with the times. If you don’t have a credit card processing you better get that, because I can guarantee that’s what people are wanting, yes, cash is king, and also people want convenience. Know what your businesses want if you’ve done something because you’ve always done it for 40 years. What happens if, and I’ll use this as an example, what happens if a bowling alley doesn’t open back up because it was flooded, but you’ve always depending on that bowling alley to have an event, or any type of thing like that, you need to think through those types of scenarios and how that might impact your bottom line and ensure that you are a business just like any other business. So make sure that you’re keeping up with the times. Those
Brandon Burton 34:15
are good, good pieces of advice, for sure. I also like asking, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Sheriffa Jones 34:27
That’s a really great question. Again, I think that it’s going to depend on your community. You know, when you see one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber in some communities, chambers will continue to exist the way they have, and in other areas, and we certainly are seeing this in Iowa, where there is more of a regional approach, where maybe chambers, Main Street, tourism or economic development, are combining in more collaboration. And so that may be the the face of what chambers look like as well. And I think it comes down to it’s it’s not about always protecting yourself and your organization. What’s best for your community and those that you serve.
Brandon Burton 35:03
That’s right, I like that. Um, well, Sheriffa, it’s been great having you on chamber chat podcast today. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about your experiences and maybe take some additional notes from you. Where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect? Yeah,
Sheriffa Jones 35:23
absolutely. Our website is a great place to connect. It’s SpencerIowaChamber.org, my email is on there. Phone number as well. I’m also on LinkedIn, so you can look me up there,
Brandon Burton 35:35
Very good. And we’ll get links to all that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy. But thank you for for being with us today and sharing your example and experiences and and really just ways that chamber is able to lead throughout a disaster like this. You guys have done a great job, continue to do a great job, and I wish you guys the best as you continue to recover and and prepare for whatever comes next, but you guys will be in a good spot. I’m sure of it
Unknown Speaker 36:04
Absolutely. Thank you so much to Brandon.
Brandon Burton 36:08
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