New chamber chairman is bullish about city's future

By BRIAN DUGGAN

bduggan@nevadaappeal.com

Scott Dockery was recently named chairman of the Carson City Chamber of Commerce.

Dockery moved to Carson City in 2000 to work for Continental Cable in Reno. His wife, Valerie, is the principal at Bordewich-Bray Elementary School.

Dockery eventually landed a job at Charter Communications in 2004 where he is now the director of operations.

The Nevada Appeal sat down with Dockery on Tuesday.

Nevada Appeal: What are your plans for the chamber?

Scott Dockery: "We're reestablishing the ambassadors, one of our new board members ... is going to spearhead that. What the ambassadors do is show up for ribbon cuttings to give more of a chamber presence, that's generally something we offer to our new members who are opening businesses.

The other thing we're really excited about it putting together a business resource committee, there's a number of people that go into business because they know how to do something and they're very good at it, but that doesn't necessarily translate into being able to run a business or have the understanding of how your cash flow works. ... A lot of businesses that fail don't fail because they don't know the business they're in or the product. They fail because they are not able to financially building the business.

So what we want to provide are seminars to allow people to come in and utilize expertise from chamber board members to help people through the process of what it takes to run a business.

Appeal: What are some of your other aspirations for the chamber?

Dockery: Right now it's been tough for businesses. The economy has not been good and that's not telling you anything you don't already know. You drive around Carson City there's closed up store fronts, there's closed up commercial space. We've lost members, fortunately we're still able to gain members. Our main goal is to provide the resources we can to the business community to give them opportunities to succeed ... the main thing is to help businesses survive.

We have the legislative session coming up in January next year. Everything we're hearing right now, the state has to close a $3.5 billion gap. There's going to be two opportunities to close that gap: Either cut spending or increase taxes, fees or whatever. And you start looking at increasing taxes, fees very often that end up on the backs of business. One of the key things we're going to be doing is monitoring what's going on over at the Legislature ... It's really easy to say if we slap this fee it's not that big, but for a small business it could be the difference between closing your doors or keeping them open."

Appeal: Are you optimistic about Carson City? In your opinion, what's in the future for Carson City?

Dockery: I think the city will bounce back. You see a business like Kohl's, right in the middle of everything that's going on, they're coming in, they're opening up, they're hiring people. You look at the group that just bought the old Kmart, they're bullish on Carson City or they wouldn't be buying that ... I think when retail is always kind of a barometer for how our community is doing, and they do lots of studies before they walk in and put something in place. You look at the auto dealerships ... those are signs that Carson City, while the unemployment is high, we've been suffering through some economic downturn, there are still plenty of business people in this community that are bullish on Carson City as a whole and I share that sentiment.

Appeal: What should a chamber of commerce be?

Dockery: To me a chamber of commerce is the voice of the business community. The chamber's responsibility is to promote business within the community, to assist business with needs ... We are revamping our website to make it a little more easy to navigate, give it a better look ... when people are looking to move into a community, very often they will go to a chamber's website to get information on the community and certainly if we have a good, robust website then that gives businesses who maybe looking into the area, people who are looking at relocating in the area, an opportunity to see what Carson City is and what the business climate is like.