09/15/1993

STAFF UPDATE
September 15, 1993

* Sales Tax Our sales tax receipts continue to exceed budget estimates. We're $13,000 ahead of our estimate through the first quarter of the fiscal year (and $24,529 ahead of our receipts last year). We're enclosing a graph comparing receipts to our budget.

* GIS The state Information Systems Council has recently adopted some recommendations on GIS prepared by the GIS Steering Committee of which Ed Archer has been a member. Ed reports:

"1. OIR will be the focal point for GIS standards,information, and data.
2. State is standardizing on ARC/INFO and cities need to know this.
3. We succeeded in getting the point across recommendation 2 includes the phrase local entities. This means cities can have access to state data if they set up their systems properly.

State planning is pursuing three demonstration projects. Clifton This project is almost complete. They are starting demos in October. Dan Hawk said he would set one up with us if we call. McMinnville & Winchester both have base maps and the other items are being put in the data bases (water,sewer,etc.)
I feel that we should meet with Don Waller and Dan Hawk to discuss what role we should play in their plans. I cannot tell what role the city must play in this system. I feel we should go to a demo. to see what TSPO is providing cities and for what cost etc."

We've enclosed the summary of the recommendations of the GIS steering committee.

* Staff List BarbaraP has prepared a new list of current staff. We've had some changes in student staff since we last printed the list.

* AllAmerica City Award Program A couple of months ago Pulaski won an "AllAmerica" city award for 1993. We're enclosing the preliminary information about the 1994 awards program. Please discuss this with any city you feel would be interested.

MTAS Strategic Plan We had three very active meetings with the MTAS advisory committees last week to discuss our strategic plan. I'm in the process of reviewing the plan with IPS and TML along with making some of the changes suggested by the advisory committees. We'll have the "final" draft version distributed to you early in October. It would be sooner, but the ICMA conference is going to interrupt the end of September.

Ann Lowe Ann was on vacation last week during the IPS annual conference so she wasn't there when everyone said all those nice things about her. On Monday, September 13, Sally invited Ann to lunch at the Hilton. Ann was a little surprised to find Don Ownby and 25 members of the Knoxville office at lunch. She was even more surprised when Sammie Lynn Puett arrived and presented Ann her award and check.