Chamber Benchmarking Trip has Defectors Again

The Greater Tampa Bay Chamber Partnership annual benchmarking trip left last week for Phoenix and already two participating companies have defected to Phoenix asking for economic refugee status.

The group is researching ongoing successful communities to learn what PR and advertising they economic development groups conduct to create such success. Yet for the third year in a row participants have used it as an opportunity to defect to better economic conditions.

“I can not go back to the economic disaster in Tampa, they force me to do unpaid volunteer work while gorging themselves on tax payer funding at the chamber It is an intellectual and economic wasteland. I’m begging you to give me refuge and a business license in Phoenix” pleaded Dave Ringtold of Tampa’s Condo Investments Inc. before the Phoenix city council.

:Phoenix has a vibrant economy and a future, that is what I want and need. Tampa, well the way things are now and are being run there is no future in or for Tampa. Said Dan Chase of Tech Innovations and a Greater Tampa Bay Chamber Partnership member who also defected to Phoenix.

Last year three members defected to Charlotte, the year before that three defected to Austin. “They are looser who just don’t get it, they don’t care about Tampa lie we do at the Chamber Partnership” said Missy Muffin of the Greater Tampa Bay Chamber Partnership. She also pointed out that this year there were fewer defections proving that things are better.

For nearly ten years the Greater Tampa Bay Chamber Partnership has taken an annual benchmarking trip to study real communities and economies, those that conduct effective entrepreneurial growth economic development and urban planning. Members traditionally have used the trips as an excuse to get out of town, get away from their wives, and to drink to much. But now it is a vehicle of escape for many.