The tentatively scheduled August 9th meeting with City, County and Chamber of Commerce officials to discuss to the Consolidated Master Agreement and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) has been cancelled.

Dennis Beson, Outgoing Chamber of Commerce CEO, sent out a notice of cancellation earlier this afternoon. He could not comment any further.

The proposed meeting was a topic of conversation at the City Commission meeting on Tuesday evening.

“There’s been discussion (among Chamber and CVB officials) about having a small meeting first rather than having all the entities coming together with the public; there’s a feeling from the City standpoint of ‘let’s try to work this out,” said City Manager Allen Dinkel. “A year ago we had kind of the same thing where there was some grumbling from the County and it took a number of meetings to get back to where we were; we gave it some time to breathe, and that’s the sentiment of the [City] Commission to just ‘breathe through it’ and get some emotions out the way.”

The Junction City Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors called for the meeting to discuss the situation with the County’s intent to withdraw from the Master Agreement covering the Consolidated Chamber.

Stan Hambright, Chamber Board President, said that the meeting is not cancelled, but simply postponed. “We’re postponing this meeting, not cancelling it just until we can get together more information.”

Although there is support for the formation of a new smaller committee to do a comprehensive review and evaluation of the Consolidated Chamber’s five year operations, Hambright noted that at some point all the parties would have to be involved.

“I would hope everyone would want to be present and engaged in the issue,” said Hambright. “We just need a little more time to make sure we have all the information before we move forward.”

Hambright noted that Dennis Beson’s resignation as Chamber CEO was not a factor in the postponement of the meeting.