12/17/2001

349 marked down from 350 - We now have 349 cities in the state. A lawsuit filed against Walnut Grove asking that the town be dissolved was ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the town was ordered to turn over its assets to the county trustee. As a result it ceased to exist.

New Handbooks Finished - My November 12 staff update promised two new manuals - one with computer information and one with general information. These were prepared by our orientation design team (Rick, Margaret, Becky, Dianna, and David). We're mailing them today! The orientation design team put a lot of work into them and they were worth the effort.

MTAS virtual group picture - Here we all are, gathered under some theoretical trees in a hypothetical garden on the UTK campus. We will have 5x7 glossy prints made and distributed in January, but as much as we are changing at the moment, I wanted to distribute at least the electronic copy now.


Finally - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.




from email of December 18:
Here are some changes that I left out of yesterday's staff update:

Administrative Services Assistant (Training) - We have promoted Jennifer Hicks to this new position. She will work with Sally to keep up with City University, the Elected Officials Academy, and all the other training we have going on. We will start recruiting for her old position of Word Processing Specialist with the Codes Team. We had several very well qualified internal applicants and several from outside MTAS. It was a difficult decision. We're confident Jennifer will do well with this new job. It's a new job for her and a new job for MTAS. The result will be an improved training program for city officials.

Senior Budget Clerk - We still are taking applications for this position.

Publications Systems Administrator - We are going to make a few changes to the position data questionnaire before we advertise.

Research Specialist - We are taking applications and will conduct interviews January 9.

Public Works Consultant - We are taking applications, but haven't received very many. We are going to hold off filling this position until the state budget situation settles down some. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but we'll see.