KUCIMAT Summer 2006 Newsletter - President's Message

Eric Levitt, KUCIMAT president

Dear KUCIMATs,

I hope everyone is having a good summer.  It is difficult to believe that we are once again coming upon another ICMA Conference.  It doesn’t seem like a year has gone by.  Hopefully if you will be at the Conference, you will be able to come to the KUCIMAT reception or dinner.  I always enjoy being able to see all those friends connected with the KU program.

I also want to take this opportunity to request nominations for the Board.  If you are interested please contact Diane Stoddard, Susan Sherman, Ray Hummert or myself.  If you don’t feel that you have the time to serve on the Board we have several committees that we started this year, and hope to see them continue into the future.

Some of you probably realize I am the City Manager in Sedona and others may not know where Sedona is located.  Many of you may have seen that Sedona faced a major forest fire at the end of June.  While working with the Type I team, I had many thoughts go through my head during that two-week period.  One thought that kept coming to me over and over again was that I was extremely happy that Sedona had initiated enhancing our preparedness for a future natural disaster over the previous year.  That preparedness helped us in responding to the various needs that occurred during that fire.  I want to take this opportunity to encourage each of you to look inside your organization to determine if your community is as prepared as it could be for any potential threats.  We are currently facing a concern regarding a possible pandemic flu.  I urge each of you to consider this threat in the future and prepare as if your City won’t have a lot of outside resources.

My experience with two localized natural disasters in the Sedona area over the last two years has heightened my awareness to the importance of Emergency Management preparedness and to NIMS preparedness.  I urge each of you to look at these same issues.  The credibility of local government management can be identified with the handling of emergencies and thus it may be one of the most important things we do in our work.

With that thought, I want to wish each of you the best for the coming years.

Sincerely,
Eric J. Levitt
KUCIMAT president