06/18/2019
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Good Afternoon MTAS,
Happy Tuesday morning to you. I hope you had a nice father’s day weekend. The quote from my calendar on Sunday was: “A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.” I hope you were able to celebrate and/or honor the father/father figure in your life.
Please remember that TOMORROW is the deadline to submit a nomination of one (or more!) of your colleagues to the IPS awards. I’d love to see MTASers win a lot of the awards this year and that won’t happen unless we write the nominations. For your convenience, here is the link to start: https://utk.questionpro.com/a/TakeSurvey?tt=O3szh4hCacg%3D. This is your last reminder for this deadline.
Two other reminders for the end of the month are for sick leave bank enrollment and Title VI training. I understand that Scott Gordy is sending reminders to those who have not yet completed this mandatory training. It takes 15 minutes, so please, if you haven’t yet, sit down in front of the screen and watch the video (register through K@te). For those who have already checked this to-do box – way to go and thank you!
I have a customer compliment to share with you. This one comes from a state employee (Alicia Barrett, a training officer with the Department of Revenue), and the kudos go to Doug and Sarah. This is what she said:
Selena and I just wanted to thank you so much for providing such excellent support for the East Tennessee MTAS meetings. We were very happy that each morning when we came in everything was set up and ready for us to begin the presentations. Doug thought of everything and made the process very smooth!
You have both been great to work with!
The leadership team met last week and heard a presentation from a committee working to improve MORe and Knowledgebase (MTAS Strategic Plan, goal 1D). The committee is off to a great start, with still a long way to go. This was an initial presentation and I’m excited to see where they go from here. Other items we discussed included improving the hiring timeline (another strategic goal) and items to present to the MTAS advisory board when they meet later this month.
Those were the big highlights from last week. Speaking of highlights – twice a month I am sending information to Susan Robertson about the work we are doing for Tennessee municipalities. She compiles information from each agency and is forwarding it to Interim President Boyd so that he may share the great news about our work with other stakeholders. If you have something that you’ve currently worked on (within two weeks) and would like me to tell your story, please send me a couple of sentences describing your work and the outcome of your work for a city/town. This applies to everyone, not just consultants. We all contribute, every day, and we want to make this known. So, please help me out and drop me a few lines. This week I spotlighted MRLn.
I can’t leave a Mustard without doing a few shout-outs for birthdays and anniversaries. Please join me in celebrating four birthdays: Melissa (June 8), Rex (June 11), Sarah (June 13), and Dennis (June 14). I also want to call attention to a one year work anniversary for Johanna on June 11. Congratulations to these five individuals on completing another trip around the sun!
The TML annual conference starts this weekend in Memphis. I look forward to seeing many of you there (I think I counted 15 who are registered). Because I’ll be at the conference on Monday, next week’s Mustard will be postponed or delayed a week.
Thank you for making life easier for our customers, and hence their customers.
Margaret
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