Professional Development - Please remember to make entries in Project Reporting for each of your professional development activities as they occur. Lisa emailed instructions about how to do this yesterday.

T-3 revisions - We are getting along well with the new IRIS required T-3s for travel reimbursement. We want to thank Ronnie, Rex, Margaret, Debbie, and Becky for going over the new T-3 database, offering suggestions for improvements, and training everyone else. We want to thank Lisa for working through the changes with our contract programmer. And we particularly want to thank Tess for making sure that everyone still gets paid!

MTAS Retreat - After some thought, our retreat committee (the support staff) has recommended we return to spring retreats. That way we will have the IPS annual conference in the fall and the MTAS retreat in the spring. So, please CANCEL the MTAS retreat that you had marked on your calendar for October 12 - 14. We will schedule a dinner on the night before the IPS retreat so we can at least all see each other in 2005.

Stories - We need more anecdotal stories we can share about projects and service we provide to cities. We have avoided, and will continue to avoid, putting long winded explanations into project reporting, but there are times when we need more of an explanation. An example of a story would be a successful project or a particularly interesting answer to a city official's question. A story is something we can submit to the IPS Exchange or that IPS can submit in a report to the UT administration or board of trustees. So, it has to be something that the city would be willing for us to share.

I hesitate to set a goal of a certain number of stories, but if all consultants would send me one (that's right just 1.) story by the end of August, we'll go from there. A story can be one or two paragraphs long, but doesn't need to be much longer. Thanks.


MMA - The Municipal Management Academy continues to grow. Here's what's starting up soon in MMA:

Jefferson City, Dandridge and White Pine, collectively, will begin a series of Level 1 classes on 8/23/05 - so far, they have only committed to doing the first three MMA Level 1 classes; we hope they will be so impressed, they will decide to complete Level 1.

Bartlett begins a new series of Level 1 classes on 9/13/05

Franklin begins a new series of Level 3 classes on 9/14/05 (this will be the first time a city has started Level 3)

Elizabethton and Jonesborough, collectively, will begin a series of Level 1 classes on 9/21/05

Martin will begin a new series of Level 1 classes on 11/8/05

Here's what's finishing up soon in MMA:

Franklin will be completing a series of Level 2 classes on 8/24/05

Dyersburg will be completing a series of Level 1 classes on 10/19/05

Cleveland will be completing a series of Level 1 classes on 11/9/05