It has been a great honor and privilege to serve as your President over the last year. It has provided an opportunity to pay back so many others who have helped me during my 41-year career managing local governments. Many of those have passed, so the best way to give back is to “pay it forward” to those who will follow.
The year has gone by quickly but a great amount has been accomplished through the efforts of so many hard-working committee volunteers and staff. Like our work as managers, there is very little of significance that we can claim ourselves; there are a lot of other fingerprints on every major accomplishment.
Much has been done to sell the value of professional management through presentations to city councils and county commissions across the state. The voters in Lakeland certainly understood when over 70% recently voted to retain the council-manager plan.
Training opportunities have been plentiful in recent months not just in number but also in locations, topics and venues.
Encouraging and developing the next generation has grown to increase the number and amount of scholarships, conduct job fairs at several universities and in holding the first Student Chapter Summit at the 2018 annual conference. Thanks to Past President Bobby Green for initiating this new focus.
Retention and recruitment has continued to be a goal and FCCMA membership continues to grow.
The FCCMA’s footprint in social media has expanded with help from the FLC. We are now on Facebook, utilize video clips on many topics, have a Twitter account and the Newsletter has been updated.
Our Charter, By-Laws and Strategic Plan have all been updated over the last year thanks to the leadership from Micah Maxwell who, at the time of this writing, has been nominated as next year’s Secretary-Treasurer.
Diversity has been enhanced on our committees, on the Board and in the line-up of training opportunities and topics and has made our organization stronger and better in many ways.
The FCCMA is not only one of the largest in the nation, but one of the most diverse and active. The annual conference has been referred to as a “mini” version of ICMA’s with top national speakers and a wide variety of interesting concurrent sessions. Early indications are that it is on track to set another record for attendance. President-Elect Cernech and his Conference Planning Committee have done a great job in what is the most complicated task that we take on each year.
With a lot of help, we have “raised the bar” over the last year and indications are that we are poised to do it again next year. We will be in good hands with the new Board and officers.
Thank you for your support, for allowing me to serve as your President and, most importantly, for all the great friendships that we have shared.
