Dear CAMS Community
Left: Amanda Elliott, Senior Program Officer and Director of California Programs. Right: Halloween festivities at Downtown San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market (Courtesy: Downtown SLO)
CAMS Quarterly | Fall 2022
By: Amanda Elliott, Senior Program Officer and Director of California Programs, Main Street America
It’s been a busy year!
We’re excited to welcome Brooke Fox as our new California Main Street (CAMS) Communications Consultant. She has hit the ground running and is helping to shore up our network, reaching out to members, keeping our website updated and improving our engagement on our social networks. Be on the lookout for her emails and notices.
If you haven’t joined one of the recent monthly check-ins, you’re missing out! So much important and pertinent information is shared in these meetings. We have significant updates on our Main Street Accreditation Standards which will be rolled out over the next year. If you didn’t attend the recent check-in with my colleague Jackie Swihart, you can check out the recording here (passcode: 28UQTXc=). I am happy to be once again visiting communities for site visits and some preliminary assessments with key long-time CAMS members Oceanside and Paso Robles, two of our premiere communities. I’m impressed with their outstanding work and look forward to highlighting their revitalization efforts.
I continue to also be impressed with all the good work happening throughout our Main Street communities. It’s safe to say our Main Streets are vibrant and in full swing. From supporting our small businesses to executing exciting, fun and safe events, our Main Streets are inspiring the community to get involved and stay connected. California Main Street is making a full-press push for funding to support our network communities through a state budget request. We’re confident that our critical economic development efforts in our historically significant districts will lead to much needed support for our exceptional revitalization efforts. We encourage you to continue to connect with your local representatives and help us make the case for our important work. Send us your updates and look out for updates on how you can directly support this request.
Excitement continues to build for our first in-person annual CAMS Conference since 2018 which will be held in Oceanside from February 22-23, 2023. In addition to learning best practices, key trends, and economic development strategies to support our small businesses, we also have the opportunity to access critical resources and tools for disaster preparedness in a pre-conference workshop hosted by the National Park Service on February 21. Stay tuned for more conference sessions and registration. If you or a community partner is interested in being a sponsor, vendor or proposing a special session please contact Brooke Fox by December 15.
As always, remember to share your announcements, events and special projects with us so that we can highlight and share them throughout the network. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns. We look forward to seeing you at our next check-in and in-person in 2023.
Let’s keep creating vitality in our communities!
In partnership,
Amanda Elliott