02/01/2010

THIS MONTH’S MEMO
The following paragraphs were prepared before I received a phone call from Dr. Mary Jinks announcing my selection as the new Assistant Vice President for the Institute for Public Service. You have received her email and I wanted you to know that when she first approached me about the position, I was caught totally off guard, because I had never envisioned anything further in my career than my current job as Executive Director of MTAS. Accepting a position that takes me away from MTAS is one that I have wrestled with for several weeks, but with further discussion and consideration, I believe this will afford me the opportunity to be of greater service to the Institute and to our customers.

My start date is March 1 and I will be very busy between now and then, but I hope to have an opportunity to meet with each of you individually and to let you know what an honor it has been to work with you in serving our fellow consultants and our customers, Tennessee cities. Thank you for all the support you have given me as Director and for all you do for Tennessee cities.

THANK YOU

You may or may be aware that members of MTAS’ Advisory Committee serve 3 year rotating terms. The new committee roster is attached. Please review and let me know if you have any questions. We need to be very thankful for these individuals who give of their time and for their cities who allow them to serve.

I know many of you may be wondering about our financial status. To date revenues are holding with budget estimates except for state shared sales tax. If the rest of the year follows the first 7 months we will be about 3% under budget in this line item. It is continuing to decrease, but not at as great a pace as last year. Hopefully, it will bottom out soon, even if it doesn’t begin to regain losses. As I have stated before, I appreciate your efforts to hold the line on costs. That will be a critical difference in the months and years to come.

As a follow on to the budget discussion, I urge you to be very selective on your professional development plans. Out of state travel will be limited to those who have secured a sponsor, unless the travel is determined to be of a critical nature for MTAS. We are expected to have at least 32 hours of professional development each year and we will strive to see that everyone obtains that amount. Professional development in excess of 32 hours will be reviewed carefully, while we encourage staff to continually develop their professional knowledge and skills, we need to balance time devoted to professional development against time dedicated to serving our customers. For you planning purposes., we will be conducting an MTAS retreat in conjunction with the IPS Conference and will try to provide 8 hours of professional development at the MTAS retreat.

Update on New Initiatives and Programs:

Retirement – As you know Dennis Huffer has retired from MTAS effective 1/31/10. We had a reception planned for last Friday, but the weather decided to interfere. Not to be out done, we have re-scheduled his reception for this Wednesday, February 3, from 1:30 to 3:30 pm.

New Training Initiative – The latest issue of the Newsletter highlighted a new delivery mechanism for our training programs. In the past we have relied basically on live sessions for our training delivery and this is still appropriate for our EOA and MMA programs, but is not a sufficient means of delivering our MAP programs. Starting out, we will supplement our live MAP sessions, by taping the last session (Knoxville) and then offering it as a video stream on our website. This will allow us to reach all cities and all city officials and employees that are interested. The approach will be to sell the video stream to the city at a very reasonable rate and they in turn can show it to everyone for that one price. Please see Gary Petree’s article in the Newsletter and let us know if you have any questions.

Pioneer Academy – Another training initiative is the Pioneer Academy. This is being funded by an Economic and Community Development Grant. It consists of 3 sessions 1)Economic Development, 2) Planning and Zoning, and 3) Retail Economic Development. Tuition for these sessions is fully paid by the grant. In addition we are using this academy as a marketing tool for the Elected Officials Academy and the grant will pay 100% of the tuition for those attending EOA. Participation is limited to the cities within the focus counties of the grant. Those 28 counties are:
First Priority (18 counties): Counties (and cities within) with the lowest participation - less than 50 total participant days in FY 2009.

Benton* Decatur* DeKalb Grainger Grundy* Hancock* Houston* Jackson Johnson*
Lake* Meigs Moore Morgan* Perry* Pickett* Smith Trousdale* Van Buren*

* indicates economically distressed or Commissioner’s Discretion county as of July 1, 2009

Second Priority (10 counties): Counties (and cities within) with low participation - between 50 and 75 participant days per year.

Bedford Bledsoe Clay* Fentress* Humphreys Lewis* Lincoln Macon McNairy Polk

Contact Gary Petree, Don Darden, Ronnie Neill, Warren Nevad and Don Darden if you have any questions.

Information Initiative Review – Just a reminder this initiative is underway. Don’t forget to do your part. Deadline is March 31, 2010


Website – Again I would encourage you to visit our website. If there are items that should be on the website, please contact Frances with your suggestions. Encourage cities to use the website. Don’t forget to use the short info piece we provided last month.

Newsletter – The latest edition of the MTAS Municipal E-Newsletter will go out the last week of December. Just a reminder to be on the lookout for innovations and report them to Frances. It may be a small item or something huge, in either case it can be very beneficial to other cities, but they have to know about it and that is our job. As always, as you interact with your customers, ask them if they are getting the newsletter and if so are they reading it. If they are not getting it, let us know and we will add them to the list. If they are not reading it, encourage them to do so.

Events Calendar - Remember to check the Events Calendar and post upcoming events, if they are not posted. If you need assistance, please check with Lisa, Justin, Frances or Becky.


Teamwork:

1) Josh and Melissa for their work in developing the Legal Issues Class that Melissa delivered this past month.

2) Steve and Brett for their work in developing the Critical Safety Priorities calls for February.

3) Josh and all the consultants that assist in the review of all legislation filed in this 2010 Legislative Session. Filing deadline was Thursday, January 28 and I believe approximately 900 bills were dropped in the hopper in the last two or three days.


Examples of teamwork. If I missed an example you think should be noted, please let me know.


Mark Your Calendars:

- Please save July 28 – 30 of 2010 for a possible MTAS retreat and IPS Conference. More detail to follow.


Staff Birthdays for November:

Staff Birthdays for January:
January 2 – PJ Snodgrass
January 9 – Dana Deem
January 12 – Doug Brown
January 21 – Pat Hardy

Staff Birthdays for February
February 5 – Sandy Selvage
February 9 – Sharon Rollins
February 17 – Margaret Norris
February 21 – Stephanie Allen
February 23 – Leigh Lawson


Kudos:
- To Linda Winstead for obtaining her designation as a Certified Public Secretary. Congratulations Linda. .

- To the following consultants and the number of documents they have reviewed in Knowledgebase.

October
Gail Cook 14
Ron Darden 284
Sharon Rollins 15
Steve Wyatt 25
William Haston 16

November
Gail Cook 4
Steve Wyatt 50
William Haston 16

December
Gary West 1
Kay Stegall 1
Melissa Ashburn 1

January
Gail Cook 25
Gary West 1
John Chlarson 3
Kay Stegall 6
Melissa Ashburn 1
Pat Hardy 103
Richard Stokes 14
Ron Darden 2
Sharon Rollins 112
Warren Nevad 6

Please email me Kudos suggestions and I will make an effort to include them in future staff updates.

As always, thanks for all you do for MTAS and Tennessee cities.

Thanks

Mike