07/22/2002

IPS Awards - So far, three people from MTAS have submitted nominations for the IPS awards this year. The deadline is August 16, so don't put it off. Thanks.

Mike Pentecost - Brenda Moss reports that Mike is doing so well after his liver transplant that he got to go home last week. He had to check back in Sunday night for some scheduled tests and will be at the transplant center for a couple of days. Sarah Ann says everything is looking good so far. PS> Mike's email address is: sap616@hotmail.com.

IPS Annual Conference and MTAS Retreat - As a cost cutting measure, both of these will be a little shorter and we will do them back to back. PLEASE CHANGE YOUR CALENDAR. The IPS retreat WILL NOT be in Gatlinburg September 12 & 13. Instead it will be in Knoxville October 10 and 11. We will have an awards dinner Oct 10, a meeting during the morning of Oct 11, and finish with lunch. The MTAS retreat will immediately precede the IPS conference. We'll start Wednesday afternoon, October 9 with a meeting and dinner and then meet all day October 10 until the IPS awards dinner. All of this will be at the Marriott (old Hyatt) in Knoxville. We'll make reservations October 9 and 10 for everyone but the Knoxville staff. Plan to arrive in time to start by 4 PM.

Cost Cutting Initiative- One of the items we discussed at our management team meeting last Thursday was the need for cutting the cost of our service. We thought of several ways we could do this, but then, in a moment of brilliance, we realized that we are after all an agency of consultants. So, everyone at MTAS ought to have more and better ideas for reducing costs than the management team would on its own. We want to lower our cost of operation. Any money we save will be used to fill some of our vacant positions, to implement changes to our salary plan, or be placed in our fund balance to save for a rainy day (or a state budget disaster). At some point, we may appoint a design team to review all of this, but for the moment, we'll rely on individual initiative. Here's your assignment.

Send me an email by Friday including your suggestions for lowering our costs. This could include:

suggestions for a reduction in our supply costs

a way to reduce our travel costs

a service we no longer need to provide

a reduction in some of our existing overhead costs

a way to share our costs with other agencies

a way to charge for something that we don't already charge for

OR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Please be creative. Sometimes the craziest ideas make sense in the long run. The management team and I will take all the suggestions and develop a comprehensive plan to reduce our costs. Thanks for your help.