It’s never fun news to cover that a major leadership position opens up in the community, but that’s exactly what happened Wednesday with the announcement that the Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce and Executive Director Rhonda Jordal have parted ways after Jordal was in the position for a little over a year.

Regardless of the reasons for the separation, we hope the chamber board uses this transition period as a time to explore options for the organization’s future and strengthen its goals for how to best serve and lift up the community’s businesses.

What do businesses want from the chamber? How can the chamber help businesses already in Albert Lea and be a strong voice for the community at the state level? What services do businesses want the chamber to offer?

With the opening in the position, now may be an appropriate time to not only reconsider these questions but also reconsider how the organization will achieve these goals.

Some people in the community have also discussed having the same leader for the chamber and Convention and Visitors Bureau, with separate boards for each remaining. Though each organization has its own means of funding, arrangements could be made to divide up the funding for the position based off of how much of that person’s job is spent on duties for each organization.

Though there’s not a once-size-fits-all approach for every community in Minnesota, some cities have had success from combining their chambers of commerce, convention and visitors bureaus or economic development authorities under the same leadership. On the other hand, some have gone the other direction where they used to have combined leadership and now are separating. Albert Lea has seen it both ways.

Whatever happens, we believe these organizations offer vital services to the community, and they are all essential to moving the community forward.

It is critical that the chamber have strong leadership, and we urge the chamber board to move forward with this as a priority.