2024-2025 MME Award Schedule/Nomination Process
Emerging Leader Award
This award recognizes a top performer who has served at least three years in the profession in one or more of the following roles: Management Analyst, Management Assistant, Assistant to the City Manager/Administrator, Assistant City Manager/Administrator, or Deputy City Manager/Administrator and has been identified by their organization as a dynamic early career leader whose skills and abilities set them apart and they are seen as having great future potential in our profession.
Advancing Women in Local Government Leadership Award
This award recognizes MME professionals that have not only exhibited excellence in municipal management and leadership but also made a difference in enhancing career opportunities for women in the local government management profession.
Innovation Award
This award recognizes MME professionals who have developed innovative solutions to providing services to their community. The innovation should have increased the level or quality of service offered and at a sustainable cost for the community to continue the service for the foreseeable future.
Community Leadership Award
This award recognizes MME professionals that have helped guide their community through a significant event that resulted in a favorable outcome. The event should have been a significant concern for the majority of the citizens and the solution a clear beneficial outcome to the community.
Mentoring Award
This 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 Achievement Award
This award recognizes new municipal executives to the profession – anyone from 1-5 years of experience. This application should express how the executive came into the profession and any challenges the new executive faced and navigated when beginning his/her career and recent accomplishments.
Executive of the Year Award
This award recognizes the MME professional that has made significant contributions to the field of local government management over the past 12 months.
Outstanding Assistant Award
This award recognizes the deputy or assistant manager or administrator that has demonstrated outstanding performance, particularly with a special project or during a period of unique conditions and circumstances.
DEI Leadership Award
This award recognizes MME professionals that 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.
John M. Patriarche Distinguished Service Award
The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor the association bestows. It honors members of the Michigan Municipal Executives association who have been members of the association for a significant number of years. Those honored have worked consistently and effectively to foster representative democracy by enhancing the effectiveness of local elected officials through innovative programs, projects, and by consistency in providing excellence in character and professionalism. A nominee must have been a member of the MME or its predecessors for a significant number of years.
To read more about the past recipients of the John M. Patriarche Distinguished Service Award, click here.
2024: Christine Burns, Former MME President
Christine Burns had more than 30 years of experience as a municipal official. She served as village manager for the Village of Spring Lake from 2012 to 2023, after serving the City of Cedar Springs for more than five years and the Village of Oxford for two years. She also served the City of Clare for more than 14 years.
Burns graduated from Central Michigan University (CMU) in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in management. She earned her master’s in public administration from CMU in 2006. She was a member of Michigan Municipal Executives (MME) and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). She served on the MME Board of Directors and on the Michigan Municipal League’s Board of Trustees, the MML Workers’ Compensation Fund Board of Trustees, and as president for the West MI Local Government Management Association.
In the press release about Burns getting this award, MME President Christian Wuerth, village manager for the Village of Milford, said, “For a lot of us, she was a friendly voice of advice, she was a person who we turned to when we needed some uplifting. I know that with the work she did in promoting younger professionals, particularly with women, she has left a profound impact. All of us have a story about Chris and how she helped us in one way or another, whether that was moral support or walking us through a difficult situation.”
Past Recipients:
- Curtis Holt – 2023
- Al Vanderberg – 2022
- Edward Koryzno – 2019
- Jack Duso – 2018
- Daryl Delabbio – 2017
- Alex Allie – 2015
- Kathie S. Grinzinger – 2014
- Eric DeLong – 2013
- Charles Graham – 2012
- Mark Wollenweber – 2011
- Theodore Staton – 2010
- Kurt Kimball – 2009
- Karl Tomion – 2008
- Robert Hamilton – 2007
- William M. Costick – 2006
- Thomas W. Kressbach – 2005
- Richard. A Huebler – 2004
- William J. Baldridge – 2002
- Frank A. Gerstenecker – 2001
- Robert S. Kenning – 2000
- Clifford R. Miles – 1997
- Fred. H. Tholen, Jr. – 1995
- Edward H. Potthoff, Jr. – 1994
- John M Patriarche – 1992