06/13/2002

TML Conference - Attendance was down and there were some logistic difficulties, but for those who came it was an excellent conference. MTAS contributed more content than ever before. And we even helped with some of the social activities.

Awards - Andre Farmer (wife of mayor Charles Farmer, Jackson) won the "Stand By Your Spouse" Award.
Roger Hawkins, water manager in Dyersburg won the Murphy Snoderly Public Works Award. This is named after the first MTAS public works consultant. Roger has been with Dyersburg 50 years come January 2003.
Athens won the excellence in city government award from TCMA.
Cindy Ogle, CM Gatlinburg won the city manager of the year award from TCMA.
Mayor Johnny Piper of Clarksville was selected Mayor of the Year.

Thanks - I'm afraid I won't be able to thank everyone individually. Sometimes it was like a three ring circus with programs being presented in several rooms at once.

Let me start by thanking Armintha, John(I think that's him), Warren, Pat, and Sally for inventing and then dressing up to present the "Survival Tips for Newly Elected Officials." Attendance at all the Saturday afternoon sessions was low, so keep your costumes, we may do it again!

Armintha and Bill coordinated the Parade of City Flags. Bill led the parade carrying the UT flag and Armintha made sure everyone was in order and ready to go.



With Jennifer helping with the Carter High School Band and Ray helping with the Fire Explorer Post who presented the American Flag, we had quite a little ceremony.

Now, I'm almost out of pictures but I also want to thank Warren, Sean, Jean, Ronnie, and Daisy for helping with the door prizes. Sean carried almost every door prize up a flight of stairs and the length of the hotel so we could lock them up. We gave away about 100 gifts (things were moving too fast to count). The grand prize was a $2,000 convection oven donated by Maytag in the City of Cleveland. It was won by Mary Ruth Cutshaw, Alderman in Sevierville. She was the first person to arrive for the last general session and hers was the first ticket dropped into our box. And, after about 40 other people won something Monday morning, hers was the last ticket drawn. She was thrilled.

I have many more people to thank:
John for taking the Parade of City Flags pictures. Sally for working on the planning committee. Ray for coordinating the Sunday prayer breakfast. The bagpipe from the Knoxville Fire Department was particularly effective. Pat and Warren for helping with the program for first time attendees. Gary for working with the TCMA awards and meeting. Dennis for coordinating the TCMA meeting. The attorneys were forced to take their continuing education in a conference room on the 11th floor overlooking the river. Sally, Jennifer and Kurt Frederick (CGT) for helping with awarding of certificates for the Elected Officials Academy graduates. Pat, Bill, David, Mike, Rick, Rex, Ray, John, Sharon, Steve, Brett, and Ron for teaching the Elected Official Academy on Friday. We had 27 attendees. Don and Gary for working on the session about labor unions. Mike for the best practices session. Lisa for loaning equipment to TML. Sandy and Armintha for staffing the booth. Rex for remembering how to put the booth together and how to take it apart. Rick for the session on workplace violence with TPMA. Kurt for being MC for the roundtables featuring: Ray, Rex, Ron, and Rick. Gary and Don for the homeland security session. Ralph, Al, and Dick for the session on revenue enhancement. Ronnie for the risk management session featuring the TML risk management pool. Sally for working with the evaluation committee. I'm sure I've left someone off my list. We were all very busy. Here are a couple more pictures - our booth and Daisy and Jean working at registration. And the unknown photographer.





Tennessee CPAs - And the day before the TML conference Dick and Ralph made a detailed (we're talking about almost 200 PowerPoint slides) presentation about city audits and city audit exceptions to the Tennessee CPA conference. Their presentation was well received and should help a lot of auditors do a better job with their city clients.