By Al Vanderberg
The Experience Committee is deep into administration of the annual MME Awards process. The deadline for submission of nominations was initially set for Friday, Nov. 13. We have only received one nomination to date, so the nomination submission deadline has been pushed back a week and a half to NOV. 23. Nominations should be emailed to Joe Bippus – joe@threeriversmi.org; Al Vanderberg – avanderberg@miottawa.org, and Summer Minnick – sminnick@mml.org. The awards out for nomination include:
- Innovation Award – recognizes MME professionals who have developed innovative solutions to providing services to their community.
- Community Leadership Award – recognizes MME professionals who have helped guide their community through a significant event that resulted in a favorable outcome.
- Mentoring Award – recognizes the MME professional who has made significant contributions in the development of new talent and/or who has designed and implemented outstanding career development programs for local government employees.
- New Executive Award – recognizes new municipal executives to the profession – anyone from 1-5 years of experience – how they came into the profession, challenges they successfully faced, and recent career accomplishments.
- Executive of the Year Award – recognizes the MME professional who has made significant contributions to the field of local government management over the past 12 months.
- Outstanding Assistant Award – recognizes the deputy or assistant manager or administrator who has demonstrated outstanding performance, particularly with a special project or during a period of unique conditions and circumstances.
The Experience Committee recently voted to add one additional award:
DEI Leadership Award – This award recognizes MME professionals who have led, implemented, and supported diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in their organizations and communities that have improved the lives and experience of people across the range of human differences, i.e. race, gender, age, sexual preference, nationality, ethnicity, etc.
Managers Facing Challenges
The Managers in Transition Subcommittee (Frank Walsh, Chair; Mitch Deisch, and Brad Kaye) have been busy responding to and counseling with managers facing significant challenges. Many contacts have been made since the last MME E-Newsletter was published. Mark Wollenweber, our Senior Advisor, has also been active with member contacts.
MME History Update
The Experience Committee will soon begin the process of updating the MME history. The last published history was titled MCMA – 75 Years of History 1927-1992. The plan is to complete the updated history for the 2022 Winter Institute in celebration of MME’s 105th anniversary. The Experience Committee will likely appoint a subcommittee to work on this project directly. Please feel free to forward any memories, photos, stories, etc. to my attention as we will soon be collecting material for the update.
We know that our members do phenomenal work and many times, due to the humility of our members, fail to celebrate significant achievements. PLEASE nominate a fellow member who has reached a significant accomplishment by Monday, Nov. 23.
Al Vanderberg
Chair, Experience Committee
Ottawa County Administrator
avanderberg@miottawa.org