GCCMA Board of Directors’ Meeting
Wednesday, March 28
Athens, Georgia
Attending: Alan Ours, Tom Couch, Julian Jackson, Kenneth Howard, Kay Love, Doug White, Stan Kelley, Chris Hobby, Al Lawson, Isaiah Hugley, Martha Perego, Andrea Arnold, Janice Eidson, Paul Radford, Dave Wills, Laura Meadows and Murray Weed. Absent: Gwen Mungin
President Alan Ours called the meeting to order and thanked everyone for attending. He then asked Kenneth Howard to deliver an invocation. Following the invocation, Ours asked that the board take a few minutes to review the minutes from the fall conference and then he asked for a motion to approve. A motion was made, a second was made and the motion passed.
Ours then asked Secretary-Treasurer Tom Couch to present the year-end financial statement. Couch went through the balance sheet and all subsequent budgets for administration and the two annual conferences. Following his review a motion was made to accept the financials, a second was made and the motion carried unanimously.
Ours asked Business Manager Janice Eidson for an update on the Spring Conference attendance. Eidson announced that registration was at 110 members and that 28 exhibitors would be in attendance.
Ours called on Kenneth Howard, as nominating committee chair, to present the recommended slate of officers for 2012-2013. Howard announced that the committee had voted to leave all District representatives in place from last year and to move the other officers up, with Joe Mosley, Manager of Metter to move into the Secretary-Treasurer position. A motion was made to accept the slate as offered, a second was made and the motion carried.
Ours then went through a list of issues that he has been involved in over the past few months. The first, a change in the process for nominating officers to the ICMA board of directors. All members had previously received information from ICMA on these proposed changes, but Ours went through the changes and asked Andrea Arnold and Martha Perego to explain why the changes were thought to be necessary.
The next item on Ours list was to explain a few housekeeping changes that were needed with the bylaws. He asked Eidson if she would explain the changes. Eidson explained that the changes were merely to make the bylaws consistent. In some places the document was referred to as Constitution and Bylaws and the work Constitution had been deleted and also the word bylaws appeared as bylaws and by-laws. There was also an addition of the words or email as a form of notification to the membership.
Ours then advised that membership numbers in the month of February had concerned him, but that in the past month, GCCMA has added a dozen new members. He asked incoming President, Julian Jackson, to please put together a strategy for marketing the association to new managers and to managers that have not belonged to GCCMA. Jackson accepted the challenge.
Ours then announced that he had appointed a steering committee for the Transforming Local Government Conference and that they would be meeting on Friday following adjournment and he invited anyone else that was interested to please participate.
Ours then called on committee chairs to provide updates on their committee activities. Julian Jackson reported that the Program Planning Committee had met in the fall to work with Murray Weed to plan the agenda for the spring conference and that Murray had taken their ideas and put together a great program. He also announced that the committee would meet immediately following adjournment to begin the process of planning for the fall conference and that he would be turning over chairmanship to Tom Couch for that meeting. Tom Couch informed the group that the Site Selection Committee had received six proposals to host the 2013 Fall Conference and that they would meet at lunch, immediately following the Board meeting, to review the proposals and determine which they’d like to conduct site visits to. Judy McCorkle arrived and was asked to give an update from the Scholarship Committee. Judy announced that the committee had only received three applications for the scholarship and that all members of the committee unanimously agreed that none were the type of student that the scholarship was targeting. None expressed an interest in a local government management position and none showed a real need for financial assistance. After discussion, the board agreed with the recommendation to not award a scholarship for 2012 and said that they needed to do more marketing to local universities with MPA programs.
Ours asked Martha Perego and Andrea Arnold to provide updates from ICMA. Andrea reminded the board that ICMA was still seeking funds for the Life Well Run program and that other Southeastern associations had made substantial contributions to the fund. Martha encouraged all to attend the 2013 ICMA Conference schedule this fall in Phoenix. Jim Collins has just been confirmed as their keynote speaker.
Ours then congratulated Laura Meadows on her recent promotion at the University of Georgia and asked her for an update from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Meadows expressed her appreciation to the group for the great partnership between GCCMA and CVIOG. She then explained the new Management 360 evaluation tool that CVIOG has developed and encouraged all managers to consider the tool for their staff reviews and evaluations. She mentioned that Julian Jackson would be going to China this summer to do some training with the group from CVIOG.
Ours asked for any new business and Eidson reminded the group to visit the exhibitors and also to buy tickets for the 50/50 raffle to raise funds for the TLG Conference in 2013.
Hearing no other new business, the meeting was adjourned.