Paul Szmal: And let's jump right into things with Amy Fuller from the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce joining us this morning. Amy, good morning. How are you?
Guest: Good morning. I'm good. How are you doing today?
Paul Szmal: I am good. We have a lot to get to here. So let's jump right in. We have some workshops coming up.
Guest: Yes, we do. And a lot of people may or may not know that employers now need to offer a 401k, some type of a plan for their employees. And Jeremy Kaza from Carta Group is going to do a couple of these workshops to see if he can help people if they haven't gotten it done yet. There's one coming up on April 30th at 11 o'clock here at the chamber office. And if you want to register, you go to CayugaCountyChamber.com and members are $10 and non-members are $20. And it's a good way to get information on how those 401k plans work. It depends on how many employees you have and things. So there are some guidelines there that Jeremy can go over with you if you haven't gotten it done yet.
And there are a couple of events that are coming up here in the month of May that's going to be jumping in at us sooner than we think. Chamber Awards Luncheon at the Springside Inn on May 6th.
Paul Szmal: This is a big one.
Guest: It is a big one. It's our annual awards luncheon and we got a great group that we're recognizing this year. We're recognizing Auburn Bagel Company, which is new to downtown Auburn. And then we have Charlie Mills for Mr. Mills Contracting. We have McKenzie Childs and Aurora. We have Cayuga Community College. And then our young professional, our Terry Breidenbecker young professional is Jalissa Stone. And then the 2026 Phyllis Goldman Encouragement Award winner is Latoya Alexander. And I can't wait to hear her story. I've talked to her a couple of times and she's going to be the keynote speaker. She's our woman of the community with her dedication and stuff. So that'll be a great time.
As you said, it's May 6th and it's at the Springside Inn. Registration is open. It'll close next week. So if you want to come and support these people that are getting recognized this year and hear Latoya's story, it's not too late to register. We have some great sponsors, too. Five Star Bank is our headline sponsor. And the event sponsor is the Marriott Q Credit Union. And then our gold sponsors are KeyBank and Northeast Maintenance Supply. So a lot of great things happening and here we go.
Paul Szmal: All right. And speaking of great things, the Small Business Week is going to run May 3rd through the 9th.
Guest: Right. And that's why we always have our lunch in that week. But May 3rd through the 9th, as you said, Small Business Week every year. What we do for just that week is if you're a brand new member to the Cougar County Chamber, you can join for $100 for the rest of 2026. That's a $260 savings. And it's a great way that if you're like, I don't know if the chamber's what I want to do or how it works and stuff. It's a great way to try it to see if it'll help your business or organization. And it's only from May 3rd to May 9th, that $100 special. So if you want to join the chamber and all our great events, contact us and we'll hook you up with a basic membership for the rest of the year. And we'll give you the contact information here in a couple of minutes.
We're talking with Amy Fuller from the Cougar County Chamber of Commerce here on FLX Morning.
Another event coming up in May is the State of the Schools. This is going to be a Zoom event on May 11th.
Paul Szmal: Yes.
Guest: We put this as a Zoom event, you know, starting in 2020, and it just gets better attendance. It's easier for people to hop on and listen to what's going on with the districts. You know, we have Dr. Misty Svaldick from the Auburn Enlarged City School District. We have Dr. Brian Durant from Cougar Community College and a representative from Cougar Onondaga BOCES all will be on to, you know, talk about how things are going, especially with the Auburn School District. The vote, I believe, is May 19th. So you want to kind of get the particulars on what's going on with the school budgets. I know all the budgets around here are kind of headline news. So come and listen to what they have to say and see if you can, you know, ask some questions that will clarify some things that maybe you're not aware of.
May happens to be one of the busiest months on the calendar for the Cougar County Chamber. You've got the Awards Luncheon, Small Business Week, the State of the Schools Zoom that's going on. You also have the next Business After Five coming up on May 20th.
Paul Szmal: Yes, we do and this is funny because this was scheduled earlier this year and it's one of our award winners, you know, it's coming up on May 20th. It's at McKenzie Childs. So it's from 5 to 630. Registration will be open for that, I believe, next week and, you know, it's a great way if you haven't been to McKenzie Childs, they've done some cool things that way to go and kind of get an inside look at how it all works there and we're excited to be over in Aurora for that event.
Guest: Yeah, McKenzie Childs, you just say that name, everybody knows what that's about. It's all black and white. You got it?
Paul Szmal: See? Absolutely. As I said, as I said when I was talking to them, if you want to come, courtly check it out.
Guest: Yes, yes. And by the way, how did the indoor tournament go at Around the World Golf?
Paul Szmal: Oh, it was great. It was great. I actually played. I have never done a simulator golf and we had a lot of fun. What a great space that is at the Finger Lakes Mall. If you're an avid golfer and the weather's not cooperating and you want to get some stuff in, you can choose a course and they set you up. It's really a great space. You know, Jen and Art, the owners, it's amazing. We had a lot of fun. We had our sponsor, Savannah Bank, and we had eight teams and we had fun. Next year we're going to back it up into February because I think with April, the week after the break, a couple people had to back away from it. But I think it's going to become our annual event because the people that were there really enjoyed themselves.
All right. We've got about a minute left, Amy, which lets us segue from indoor golf to outdoor golf in the annual Chamber Golf Tournament.
Guest: Yes, registration is now open for our annual golf tournament. It's going to be at Dutch Hollow on June 12th. There's sponsor opportunities for that. And it's a captain and crew format and this is our 33rd year of our golf tournament. It's a 10 a.m. shotgun start, 4.50 a foursome. There are some sponsor opportunities, lunch on the course, and then we do a nice buffet dinner at Dutch Hollow during the awards ceremony, longest drive, closest to the pin. We have hole-in-one sponsors, Beardsley Architects and Engineers, and Savannah Bank. If someone's lucky enough to get a hole-in-one, you could win $10,000 in cash.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I got no shot at that. So maybe you should practice at the Around the World Golf so that you do well at this tournament.
Guest: That's what I think.
Paul Szmal: There you go. If you want to get into the tournament or find out more about any of the stuff that we've talked about this morning, Amy, how do people get a hold of you?
Guest: You either go on CougarCountyChamber.com, everything that I just talked about is on our homepage or there's a link to it. Or you can call the office directly and we'll hook you up with registration and invoicing and all that stuff.
Paul Szmal: Amy, thanks so much. Appreciate it as always.
Guest: All right, you have a great weekend, Paul.
Paul Szmal: You too.
