04/13/2005

Weekly - My goal was to make this a weekly, short email. I've been out of the office a lot lately, so I haven't made the weekly commitment. But as I was saying. . . .

Out of state - We have several management consultants in Kentucky this week at the joint meeting of the Kentucky and Tennessee city managers associations. Last year, Kentucky came to Nashville and this year we're returning the favor. When you do go out of state, please remember that our travel system requires a special form (T-18) for out of state travel and it works better if you send it in about a month in advance.

Resignation - We're sorry that Lisa Murray has resigned effective April 26. She will be joining the School of Business in the Department of Marketing and Logistics on campus. She will be supervising a staff of five and work with the budget and the tenure process. We'll miss her and her contribution to our training program.

THANKS - Sally was shocked this week and sent me this note: "When awards are given out I want to be sure that Steve, Bill, and Brett get one. They are the first team EVER to get training course material to me 3 days BEFORE the deadline that I had set up!!!!" Bill claims that it was all Steve's doing. Our training is much better since we started using the CEU standards. And it takes longer to prepare. I want to thank everyone for putting in the extra effort. The results are worth it.

Oak Ridge - Ron and the move committee have had several meetings with the UT architect assigned to our project. The plans are taking shape. After they are finalized, we'll get an estimate of the time needed to make the renovations. At that point, we should be able to project a date for the move.

Library material review - We have a project going to improve the material available to cities and consultants in our library. As part of that effort, and in preparation for our move to Oak Ridge, many consultants have spent time recently helping to decide what to retain and what to discard. At one point this week, we had five consultants in the library at once. Becky, Frances, and Alyssa have been excited to keep up. Frances reports it looks like a cyclone has gone through the stacks. We'll be in better shape when this is done. Thanks.

And as a reminder, this paragraph is in most consultants' APR this year:
As part of MTAS' effort to enhance and expand the MTAS library into an electronic information center available to and useable by Tennessee cities and MTAS consultants, I will work to insure that our information center has a comprehensive collection of current and accurate electronic information for my functional area. I will achieve this initiative by partnering with the Information Resources staff in defining information needs, providing electronic data, recommending sources for additional data, acquiring city-generated information, and regularly weeding existing information. I recognize this initiative will require a prioritization of my time and commitments and that I will commit at least 8 hours per month to the initiative if needed.