Two items to share this week from your director: a very successful meeting was held with members of the FCCMA Legislative Committee and a selected group of House, Senate and joint legislative committee staff directors and their analysts. We met in Tallahassee on January 29 and had 9 committees represented. This is the fourth time the Committee has held this meeting to share our availability with these directors and analysts as they study legislation impacting cities and counties. The Committee shared its availability and also stressed our partnership with both FLC and FAC on legislative advocacy. We noticed this year that several of the directors are newly appointed, and some of the analysts are in their first year at the Capitol, too. Since the meeting, five different bills have been sent to our chairman and vice chairman for discussion – which is more than we reviewed last year! A very promising beginning for the Committee’s work this session. Thanks to Rich Reade, Doug Thomas, Matt Brower, Ocea Lattimore, Christina Paredes and Beth Rawlins for attending, and to the full committee for its hard work!
Secondly, my sincere thanks to all of the members and corporate invitees who attended the Winter Institute in Lake Mary! Jill Silverboard helped to create a very dynamic, engaging program on change, from which I definitely had ‘take-aways’ to implement with my own team. It was great to see our members connect on communications, leadership and to learn best practices in managing change.