The Chaska City Council is no fan of the Chaska Area Chamber’s recent vote to merge with chambers in Chanhassen and Victoria.

Monday night, the council grilled the chamber’s Executive Director Deb McMillan and Board Chairman Lon Hand on what the vote could mean for Chaska and its businesses.

“The intent and hope is to take what we do know and expand on that,” said McMillan. “We really have a great opportunity here to create a great business organization,” she added.

While McMillan and Hand extolled the virtues of better networking and lobbying opportunities with a regional chamber, the council urged a more Chaska-centric approach.

“It seems selfish, but I take a Chaska-first option,” said Councilor Jay Rohe, adding that he worried combining chambers would create competing ways of thinking among chamber members. “I have really big reservations about going forward with this. Bigger isn’t always necessarily better.”

“We’re used to having the chamber be a voice for Chaska,” said Mayor Gary Van Eyll.

“That won’t change,” assured McMillan.

“It already has,” noted Van Eyll, pointing to the chamber’s failure to take a stance on the question of where a new Highway 41 Minnesota River crossing should go.

Last month, the board of directors for the Chaska Area Chamber voted 7-2 in favor of the merger. The Chanhassen and Victoria boards both voted unanimously in favor of plans to create a regional chamber. But their votes weren’t enough to sway the opinion of the council.

“I’ve never looked at Victoria and Chanhassen as being strong chambers,” said Rohe. “I think we’re worlds above them. I look at it as if we combine with weaker chambers and we’re a strong chamber, could that possibly weaken our chamber?”

Rohe said it didn’t make sense to merge with the Chanhassen chamber because he viewed Chanhassen as a suburban community, while he felt Chaska was a free-standing city.

“We do things different here in Chaska,” he said. “It’s a much different political climate.”

McMillan countered saying that geographic locations weren’t a major concern to their members.

“We represent the business community,” said McMillan. “The business community doesn’t really pay that much attention to zip codes.”

“We’re kind of listening to what our members want,” added Hand.

The council expressed concerns about a loss of identity with the merge as well as a possible loss of the Chaska Area Chamber office downtown.

“The loss of Chaska identity, the loss of a physical office all concern me,” said Councilor Bob Lindall. “But the difficulty will be how will you be able to be a voice for Chaska and a voice for eastern Carver County?”

Hand said that sub-committees, like Chaska’s Downtown Business Council, could be created to focus on areas of concern within the member cities.

McMillan pointed to other successful regional chambers that could create a template for them to follow. Those chambers included Twin West, Twin Cities North and the Dakota Regional Chamber.

“We have yet to find anyone that says at the end of the day we’re really sorry we did it,” McMillan said of other regional chambers.

McMillan couldn’t say for sure what would happen to the Chaska Area Chamber office yet or whether they would take the issue to the full membership for a vote. “There’s a lot of work to do and it’s good work,” she said.

McMillan noted that they hope to have everything “buttoned up” by the end of the year.

-Mollee Francisco, staff writer

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