HURON — Membership in the Huron Chamber & Visitors Bureau stands at 431, or 62 percent of all local businesses, the president and chief executive officer said Monday.
In her semi-annual report to the City Commission, Laurie Shelton briefed the board on chamber activities ranging from event recruitment efforts to this year’s promotion of 100 years of pheasant hunting in the Huron area.
She said sales tax numbers for 2018 were up 5.14 percent from the year before.
The chamber sent five different direct emails to 2,402 hunters in marketing the city and its Ringneck Festival, she said.
“We will continue to market Huron strongly as a pheasant hunting destination,” she said. “Bird numbers may be down, but we still have more birds than any other state.”
Shelton said the chamber is also working on a 2019 marketing plan for Splash Central. A People’s Transit seven-passenger van will be wrapped with Splash Central advertising as well as hotel logos. The van takes passengers on a weekly basis from Huron to Brookings, Pierre, Mitchell, Sioux Falls and Watertown.
Shelton said she and Jon Jungemann are making membership calls. They are about one-fourth of the way finished, with the goal of wrapping it up this spring.
It is a tiered dues program with the ability to add on from the chamber’s menu to build the membership that fits each business type, she said. All members will be switched to a Jan. 1 deadline. She said the response from members has been very positive.

Meanwhile, Shelton said the holiday shop local campaign was a hit with retailers and shoppers. Twenty-eight retailers participated during the five-week promotion.
Commissioners also:
• Announced that city offices will be closed and the City Commission won’t meet next Monday in observance of the Presidents’ Day holiday. The Monday garbage and recycling container routes will be collected on Wednesday, Feb. 20. Containers should be out Tuesday evening as the trucks will not be rerouted.
Also, the rubble site will be closed this Saturday and next Monday.
• Approved requests for alcohol beverage consumption in a public area from Holy Trinity Catholic Parish for a multi-cultural festival on March 1 at the parish and Joan Nettinga for a family reunion July 5-6 at Ravine Lake east shelter.
• Approved a raffle request filed by the Beadle County Izaak Walton Chapter for Dec. 30 at the clubhouse.
• Promoted Chad Bogh from water-sewer maintenance crew leader to water-sewer maintenance foreman.
• Approved an application for abatement and/or refund of property taxes filed by Mount Olivet Church of Huron, 638 Lincoln Ave. S.W., for property at 655 Minnesota Ave. S.W.
• Approved a $59,442 payment to Premier Contracting LLC of Huron for water main replacement work. The payment is for stored materials. The completion date is in June.
• Authorized Fire Chief Ron Hines to apply for up to $11,000 in Homeland Security grant funds to replace air bottles that will have reached their 15-year life span at the end of the year.
• Approved a wastewater treatment facility plan agreement with Banner Associates Inc. At a cost not to exceed $21,500, the company will address the requirements of the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources and allow the city to apply for loan and grant funding for wastewater facility improvement needs.
Those needs were identified in a preliminary engineering study completed for the city in 2016.
• Approved a voluntary mutual aid agreement with the South Dakota Water and Wastewater Agency Response Network.
The statewide network provides water and wastewater systems with a process for sharing emergency resources and for responding and recovering more quickly from a natural- or human-caused disaster, said City Engineer Brett Runge.
He said in the past the city of Huron has participated with response to disaster requests, but has never signed the mutual aid agreement or officially joined the network,
As of the fall of 2017, there were more than 100 local members in the network, consisting primarily of towns, cities, rural water systems and water and sanitary districts.