Good Thursday morning MTAS,
 
I hope you are staying healthy, safe and well as the COVID pandemic continues. I’ve told you before that I’m tracking the numbers and watching things closely. I am also watching the financial impact on the economy and reading economists’ forecasts and predictions. In that vein, I want you to know that I am not losing sleep over our financial future. The leadership team has met and discussed strategies to make sure that MTAS continues to operate for our customers. We are ending this fiscal year with strong numbers that will set us up well for the new fiscal year that begins in July. Wes and I will be able to give you more specifics after the state’s budget is adopted.
 
In keeping with the COVID thread, Steve C. shared a picture with me that I want to share with you. He’s got the perfect match of oranges (not easy to do!). Steve, thanks for sharing, and for making sure that you’re doing your part to “flatten the curve.”
                         
 
Next, I want to give you a little background on the switch to the new itinerary database. As you’ve heard before, we are having to make a switch away from Lotus Notes due to lack of support for the software. Even though changes were made to the itinerary database a few years ago, it was still based on a Notes platform. Also, I understand that in the future all employees will be responsible for entering their leave time into IRIS, the accounting software the university uses. Therefore, this conversion accomplishes two things: it gets us off of the Notes platform and preps us for the move to the new university system (our leave/itinerary database will go away when we begin entering our leave time into IRIS). If you are not already, I encourage you to use Outlook as your calendar. Lisa has done a great job with the conversion. I have not heard of anyone who had trouble with lost data or missing requests. The format is new, and that will take some getting used to. Please remember, that the main point of this database was/is to help internal staff capture our leave requests and input them into IRIS. Quite a few of us used it as a calendar, but that was not its original intent, nor will it be going forward. Give it a try and if you have operational problems, please let your supervisor know. I am grateful to Lisa for making the color switch so that the days of the week alternate colors.
 
Continuing with celebrating innovations, I’d like to call out some good behavior I’ve seen recently. Some of the management consultants have regular meetings with their city managers/mayors. Several have continued those meetings, and done them virtually. What I’ve been really pleased with is the inclusion of other technical and training consultants in those meetings. What our customers see is a strong, united MTAS that is here to serve them. Furthermore, the specialists are able to educate customers on trends in their fields as it relates to COVID. The feedback I have heard from MTASers and customers, is that it’s been a very positive experience. Way to go!
 
For the week ended June 5, we had two anniversaries I’d like recognize: John C. on the first, and Honna on the third. Congratulations to the two of you for another successful year of helping cities, and many years of service to cities between the two of you.
 
Everyone, I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: thank you for your positive impact on our customers. What you do each and every day matters to someone else, and in some cases, a lot of “someones.” Together we truly have a significant impact on this fine state. I recognize your contributions, and I hope that you do as well.
 
Stay well and safe,
Margaret