09/04/2001

Budget Reallocations - I spent all day last Thursday in Cookeville with the IPS directors, Tom, and Mary discussing several possible alternatives. We came to no final resolution or conclusion. IPS has to have a recommendation submitted to President Eli Fly by October 15 and it may take us the rest of September to develop our plans. I will keep you informed but so far all I can report is that our plans continue to change.

Orientation Design Team - The Orientation Design team (Rick Stokes,chair, David Angerer, Margaret Norris, Dianna Al-Habib, and Becky Smeltzer) met with the management team during the conference call Tuesday morning. We will meet again during dinner at the IPS retreat. So, if you see a group of us working pool side, please understand.

IPS Annual Conference - Here's some last minute advice:

dress will be business casual

come early (be there in time for the 11:30 Tuesday opening - unless you are scheduled for the new employee orientation)

stay late (attend all events through the 11:30 Wednesday awards luncheon)

we will NOT have a separate MTAS staff meeting

the entire conference will be at the Knoxville Hyatt

Codes - Did you know that of the 350 cities in the state, we have prepared 221 codes? We have 20 on the waiting list. 15 cities have codes prepared by a private company. 94 cities have no published code. Many of those cities are too small to have one. The management consultants and the codes team are working to convince the larger cities without codes to start the codes process.

NoteBooks - The library staff spent two days in training last week on the new library catalog software - NoteBooks. The installation and training went smoothly. Already our 13,000 records have been converted. Our goal is to give all staff access to the catalog by September 30 with full installation of all features completed by February, 2002. Frances, Becky, Leah, Lisa, and Jim are working hard to make all of this work for the rest of us.

State Stormwater permits - John Chlarson is working with Robert Haley of TDEC on the new state stormwater permits. John is working so closely with him that we've loaned office space in Nashville and Jackson to Mr. Haley. He finds it easier to get work done in our space than his! More to the point, cities will have a better designed stormwater permit and process because of John's input.

Personnel - We have completed our reference checks and are making a recommendation (to IPS and Human Resources) to hire someone for our Systems Analyst position in Knoxville.

We will conduct interviews for both the legal consultant positions in Knoxville on Wednesday, September 5.