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KUCIMAT Awards 2004

Intern Excellence Award--Jeremy Smith

Lifetime Achievement Award--Alan Morris

Profile in Courage Award--Sandra Tripp Jones

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2004 Intern Excellence Award

Jeremy Smith, Class of 2004

Since June 1, 2003, Jeremy Smith has been an integral part of the Village of Sussex management team in his position as Assistant Village Administrator, and I have the sincere privilege to nominate him for the KUCIMAT Intern Excellence Award for 2004. Jeremy has brought a diverse set of skills and knowledge to the position of Assistant Administrator. As the first Assistant in Sussex, I asked Jeremy to define the role of the position and institutionalize is importance to the organization. Jeremy did just that. In addition I challenged Jeremy with the expectation that I learn as much from him as he would learn from me. In the last year, working side by side with Jeremy, I have truly become a better Administrator because of Jeremy's knowledge, technical skills, and the energy he brought to the position.

Jeremy's integral role as part of the management team and his signature on the position can be exemplified in many ways:

• Jeremy, during a transition of the Recreation Director and her Administrative Assistant, took over all responsibilities of the position and successfully completed implementation of all recreation and senior programs, including teaching Soccer and T-Ball on his off evenings. He also led the team in recruiting, training and Supervising the new Director with tremendous success.
• Jeremy was the team leader in writing design guidelines as part of the implementation plan for the Sussex 2020 plan and took the initiative to staff the Architectural Review Board. He is now responsible for assuring new development is in compliance with adopted guidelines.
• Jeremy along with the Clerk-Treasurer established a high tech, easy to use E-packet for the bi-monthly Village Board meetings. The e-packet is e-mailed to each Board member and a disk is also available to Board members. Board members utilize laptops to view the packet during board meetings. This e-packet format is becoming the proto-type for the area.
• With a Health Insurance re-opener due in fall of 2004, Jeremy served as Chairman of the labor/management health insurance committee. As a result of that committee, a proposal to implement a HSA plan is on its way for approval by both parties with a substantial cost savings to the Village of Sussex.
• Jeremy requested and was granted the responsibility of supervising the Building Inspection Department and has made a substantial impact on the performance of the department.
• Jeremy also has chaired three employee committees; customer service, staff relations and safety and training. Those committees have established and implemented goals and objectives and action steps with measurable outcomes.
• Jeremy has been instrumental in updating long range financial plans, personnel and operating policies, as well as village outdated ordinances.
• Jeremy has also been successful in assuring compliance with all federal and state requirements for human resources related issues.

However, the final icing on the cake as far as why Jeremy deserves this award lies in the fact that he was recently named as Interim Village of Sussex Administrator, due to my resigning to take a new manager position. Both I and the Village Board unanimously endorsed Jeremy for the interim position. At the age of 23, Jeremy possesses the maturity, commitment to excellence, knowledge and skills required to be a successful and respected municipal manager. He has earned my respect, as well as the respect of the Village Board, staff and the community as a whole.

I believe Jeremy will be one of the finest managers in our business, based on his performance over the last 15 months as the Sussex Assistant Administrator and deserves the Intern Excellence Award

M. Chris Swartz
Village Administrator
Village of Sussex , Wisconsin

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2004 Lifetime Achievement Award

Alan Morris, Class of 1970

Alan Morris is an exceptional candidate for this recognition. His professional career of more than 40 years has focused entirely on administration of local government. Serving as Miami County's second County Administrator, Alan is responsible for implementing many professional practices with limited resources, all positively contributing to County services. As any worthy chief administrator, Alan stays abreast of technical developments in the broad scope of professions represented in local government. He serves as a willing mentor and is highly committed to the professional development of his department directors and employees. Alan leads by example and achieves outstanding results through a variety of means. He is easily accessible and maintains ongoing dialogue with staff and community leaders.

While Alan performs a variety of tasks – formal and informal, much of his management strength lies in forming liaisons and building consensus through his collaborative and cooperative approaches to conflict inside and outside the courthouse. He is a dedicated, sensitive, honest, innovative, flexible professional who believes in the manager/administrator form of county government.

During his professional career, Alan has collaborated and implemented programs and projects ranging from community policing, consolidated dispatching; water conservation via the reuse of waste water for oil field recovery; golf course development, recreational fishing areas, and acquisition of future water rights. Alan also initiated the first fully mechanical solid waste system in New Mexico and the framework for major electrical generation and distribution improvements. In particular, his expertise includes intergovernmental-relations, grant writing, financial planning, and economic development. Alan is a life-long learner and always strives to be more technically savvy. He aggressively championed for the development of Miami County's first official government website, established an employee computer purchase program, upgraded employee computer skills training, and has strongly encouraged participation in programs such as e-Gov Procurement (purchasing) and HRePartners (recruitment).

Intergovernmental Relations – Alan has been very instrumental in developing strong intergovernmental relations with city/county governing bodies, as well as state and federal regulatory agencies.

• Instrumental in the permitting of cable television to be installed and worked with individuals, including Senator Bob Dole, toward the regulatory aspects of cable television in the 1970's and 1980's.
• Assisted Congressional decision-makers for the continuation of small community air service subsidies to the commuter aircraft industry.
• Established a countywide Intergovernmental Relations Council in Miami County to improve dialogue and accountability among area governmental agencies.

Grant-Funded Projects – Alan's skilled grant writing abilities have led to the construction of many successful community projects, including:

• A new wastewater treatment facility and other improvements to the sewage disposal system in the City of Liberal, where a federal grant from the EPA of $5.8 million was applied to the total project cost of over $8 million. This state of the art treatment facility continues to operate efficiently today.
• A railroad overpass, funded through KDOT. It was constructed after Alan's departure from Liberal and is named after Mike Hayden, who was in office at the time of the funding announcement.
• The Arkalon Pipeline, a 9-mile 20" gravity flow pipeline from the wastewater lagoons to city property outside the city limits in order to divert treated wastewater effluent from a land-locked body per KDHE administrative order. Economic Development Administration & CDBG grants covered 60% of the $1.7 million project costs.
• The Glenn L. Martin Terminal Building and a Crash-Fire-Rescue facility at the Liberal Municipal Airport, as well as numerous airport improvement projects.

Economic Development – Alan Morris transitioned Miami County's economic development functions from private enterprise to a County Department. While serving the City of Liberal, Alan was responsible for guiding numerous new and expanding businesses, and facilitating the passing of many industrial revenue bond issues for such assistance. His notable economical development accomplishments include:

• Development of the Third Street Mall Project, which included the renovation of a historic hotel into a restaurant, offices and living space, plus an outdoor fountain with benches to create an attractive focal point in the downtown area.
• Establishment of the Joint Economic Development Council consisting of community representatives appointed by the City, County, Chamber of Commerce and a private development agency. This board is still successfully functioning at this date.
• Active in Liberal's Essential Air Service program in order to sustain commercial service to the community.
• Establishment of the local Convention & Tourism Bureau and instituted the transient guest tax program.
• Instrumental in acquiring the former Beech Aircraft manufacturing facility, which is now the Mid-America Air Museum, the 4th largest military air museum in the U.S. housing over 100 aircraft.

Financial Planning – Current Miami County Commissioners especially appreciate Alan's strong fiscal planning strategies, which have resulted in earning an “aaa” rating. His notable accomplishments include:

• Aggressively developed a successful bond program in Miami County to finance various road and bridge improvements throughout the county. Also petitioned for legislative changes (KSA 68-1103) regarding debt limitations that resulted in greater freedom to counties in financing projects.
• Streamlined the Miami County budget process. Though faced with the challenges shared by most other Kansas counties, Miami County is always positioning for the future and remains resilient.
• Developed Miami County's first comprehensive Capital Improvement Plan for short and long-range capital acquisition and development.
• Collaborated with a local brokerage firm on the development of a Corrections Care Program to provide access to discounted healthcare to County inmates.

Alan Morris earned a BA from Fort Hays Kansas State College and two masters degrees (MA, MPA) from the University of Kansas. Alan has served as County Administrator for Miami County, Kansas since 1998. He previously served as the City Administrator for Topeka, Kansas (1989 – 1997), City Manager for Liberal, Kansas (1976 – 1989) and Tucumcari, New Mexico (1972 – 1976), and as Assistant City Manager for Garden City, Kansas (1969 – 1972). Alan recently announced his retirement from Miami County and his public service career, which is effective later this year.

Alan just celebrated 35 years as an ICMA member. He has also served on ICMA's International Task Force (1999-2001), Workplace Diversity Committee (1992-1994), and was awarded the ICMA Burkhalter-Dever Award in 1998 for the International Exchange Program to New Zealand. Alan has also been honored with numerous accolades closer to home at the state and local levels.

Alan's spirit of excellence in public management is wonderfully reflected in something he wrote for a recent annual report. “To most people, a county is first and foremost a place where we live and work. But Miami County is much more than that. It is a community where people are linked to one another, to family, to friends, to neighbors, stores, commercial enterprises and industrial bases, and to County Administration. We have common goals and purpose; and we therefore need to work in a spirit of cooperation. We all have a responsibility to the people we serve and our mission must be based on the expectations of those within our community. That's why I believe that together we have a very unique opportunity to make those expectations happen, to be a part of the force that directs and implements the dramatic, but essential, movement of Miami County's agenda further into the 21 st century.” Alan's commitment to bringing professional county administration to our citizens is indeed worthy of this nomination.

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2004 Profile in Courage Award

Sandra Tripp Jones, Class of 1992

It is with extreme pride that I would like to nominate Sandra Tripp Jones for the KUCIMAT Profile in Courage Award. In June of 2003 Sandra decided that Iraq needed people with city management skills. At that time the hot issues were the breakdown of basic services. She contacted ICMA, serving as recruitment subcontractor of Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a large NGO out of Raleigh, North Carolina. RTI's contract with USAID called for about 200 “experts” for a Local Governance Project. In August, she was accepted into the program and spent one week with about 25 others in Raleigh for “training” and was in Iraq on September 15, 2003 as a “Local Government Specialist.” She was assigned to work in Kirkuk, in the north. She was told that the situation was “fluid” and she could shape her own job and the guidelines were to be the USAID contract/program objectives.

Her chief assignment turned out to be to work with the finance manager and to train the provincial council and local councils on council roles and procedures, budgeting and generally how to work together. The challenges were numerous, beginning with the reality that the local councils, the local governor, the local managers had no local authority. The government of Iraq was and still is highly centralized with almost all decisions coming from Baghdad. But progress was made that was largely procedural and relational. This was all the more important because Kirkuk itself was an ethnically mixed area with a history of both ethnic cooperation and ethnic tension. She learned much from this experience, not least of which is that politicians start as people everywhere in the world and training starts with them as people. She also learned from their courage: their lives and those of their families were at risk every day while they struggled to define the nature of working democracy at the local level and to define their roles where there were no models.

To Sandra, the work was both rewarding and extremely frustrating. Security concerns constrained her movements. Communications were almost exclusively face-to-face because phone service was sporadic at best, and most people had no phones anyway. Threats and unexpected holidays frequently resulted in cancelled meetings. The grinding frustration of Iraqi officials with their lack of authority and inability to govern made it difficult to focus on “skill building.” But Sandra found that the Iraqis with whom she worked were wonderful and she reports she was blessed to have known and worked with them.

She has many memories of unique experiences – some happy, some terrifying:

• Joining with Arab women (rich ones!) welcoming a bride and groom with our dancing and ululations to the music of an ancient drum.
• Laughing with Arab council members from Hawija who kidded me that among their accomplishments was to have formed a committee to assist the older council members get “fourth wives.”
• Running into the “safe” room of our house in the middle of the night because rockets were whistling overhead and exploding nearby.
• Standing before a local council that was participating in training on their work priorities for the future, while automatic rifles went off wildly all around us. It was happy shooting but I could not help the tears. They felt very badly for me and for themselves.
• Admiring 200 women elementary school teachers, carefully dressed and very polite, as they marched into the Government Building to meet with the governor in protest against political parties having renamed their schools as political acts. These women never would have exercised this free speech under Saddam; they would have been shot.
• Meeting in Baghdad with the Minister of Public Works and Municipalities, Miss Nesreen Berwari, an extraordinary Kurdish woman. We met to plan a visit from the Governor and a delegation of council members. I was helping them learn the value of intergovernmental relations and coordination.
• Arguing with Sheik Akar, Arab council member that his was an advisory role, and him saying he had been elected therefore he, with the other council members, was in charge. I finally “won” having to tell him that Paul Bremer was in charge in Iraq and that he had given the local councils no authority as yet. That same Council member also called me daughter and showed me great affection. He was assassinated on my birthday, driving to a council meeting.
• Convincing my assistant Mohammed Jalal that he could become a city manager.
• Listening to the entire Koran being “sung” from the mosque on our street, several times a day during Ramadan and feeling calmed by it.

For Sandra, it was hard to assess the value of her work. She feels she gained more than she offered. Their thirst for democracy is real, and she believes she promoted that in some small way. She encouraged freedom of expression, encouraged them to take responsibility and initiative where it has been discouraged for so many years, helped focus debate on the common good, provided tools for transparency and accountability, and modeled compassion and respect for rights of everyone regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, or economic class. She knows we must respect the Iraqi people, remembering that the democracy that they will hopefully have the real opportunity to create, will be their own.

After leaving Iraq in March 25, 2004, Sandra says:

"I do not know when I will return to Iraq. I hope to see my friends again. I hope to see a country that has succeeded against huge odds in establishing a democracy which holds life dear and protects the rights of all its people. I hope to reinforce what I think was my most important contribution – evidence by my presence there that I, and people like me, care enough about the Iraqi people to leave our families and take the risk to go there and offer what we can."

There can be no more deserving candidate for this award. Sandra exemplifies the ideals of KUCIMATs through her exceptional courage, fortitude and adherence to the urban management profession.

John Nalbandian
Chair, Public Administration Department