Fairfield-Suisun chamber honors area businessman

As reported  in the Daily Republic on June 14, 2013
Local businessman Anthony Russo is the recipient of the Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce’s annual distinguished citizen award.
The chamber conducted its 66th annual Installation and Awards Luncheon on Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn. It gave out several awards and installed its 2013-14 board of directors.
Russo has lived in Solano County more than 30 years, initially in Vacaville and now in Green Valley. He married Debra Yarbrough and they chose to live here rather than in
Contra Costa County, where Russo grew up. Russo called this “the best decision we ever made.”
Russo is part of Canon Station LLD, a group that’s working to develop land near Peabody Road. He worked with Fairfield to help create the city’s Train Station Specific Plan,
which calls for 6,800 residences and several thousand jobs in that area in coming decades. The community is to be built around a mass-transit hub – the train station – and have
a village scale.
He is also a party to plans to develop parts of rural middle Green Valley. He worked on Solano County’s Middle Green Valley Specific Plan that calls for both development
and farmland and open space preservation. The results brought together opponents who had been involved in a decades-long growth dispute over the area’s future.
Over the years, Russo has done such things as work for Solano Concrete, spearhead the construction of Fairfield’s Octo Inn soccer complex and serve on the Chamber of Commerce
board, board Chairwoman Sue Vaccaro said when presenting the award.
“On behalf of Debra and myself, thank you very much,” Russo told the gathering.
Debra Russo won the award in 2010 and her father, the late Billy Yarbrough, won the award in 2005. Other past winners are former Fairfield Mayor Gary Falati,
Daily Republic publisher Foy McNaughton, Herm Rowland of Jelly Belly Candy Co., Fairfield City Manager Sean Quinn and Kathy Parsons of Credit Bureau Association.
ALKAR Human Resources won the business of the year award. Founded in 1985, its stated goal is to provide businesses in Solano,
Napa and Sonoma counties with qualified workers.
Christina Baird of sMarketnow.com won the K.I. Jones award for service to the chamber. Monte Hoover of Gillespie’s Abbey Carpet won the chamber ambassador of the year award.
Vaccaro turned over the position of chamber board chair to Steve Lessler of The Lessler Group.
“Good afternoon, fellow members,” Lessler said when he stepped to the podium. “Welcome to a new (chamber) year.”
A slogan for his upcoming term could be “doing business locally,” Lessler said. He talked about the depth and breadth of businesses in Solano County
and said businesses and agencies should seek what they need within the community before going out of the county.
The chamber 2013-14 executive board members are Lessler, chairman-elect Don McDonald, Michael Cortez, Monte Hoover, Anand Patel, David Welch and Vaccaro.
Directors are Ken Brock, Steve Huddleston, John Jamison, Dionne McCullar, Amit Pal, David Schwind, Chuck Timm, Tamer Totah and Annie Vogelpohl.
Ex-officio members are Fairfield Mayor Harry Price, Suisun City Mayor Pete Sanchez and Solano Community College Superintendent-President Jowel Laguerre.
Story originally printed and posted online with the Daily Republic with Special Thanks to: Barry Eberling at 427-6929 or beberling@dailyrepublic.net Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/beberlingdr.