By Al Vanderberg
This is typically the slowest time of the year for the Experience Committee. COVID-19 has made that even more the case.
We asked the membership for nominees for the ICMA Distinguished Service Award and Mark Wollenweber was suggested by a few members. The rules state that a nominee for this award must be retired for a period of two years, so we nominated Daryl Delabbio this year. We will nominate Mark hopefully as early as next year. We also nominated Frank Peterson, winner of the MME Community Leader Award for 2019, for an ICMA Leadership Excellence Award for his work reforming the fire service in Muskegon. We also looked to nominate Pat McGinnis, winner of the MME Innovation Award, for an ICMA Leadership Excellence Award but due to timing issues with the start date of the “Forever Grand Haven” perpetual 3 mill allocation for infrastructure, this will be pursued next year as well.
We will soon be putting a call out to the membership for nominations for the 2020 Patriarche Award, so it is not too soon to be thinking of worthy candidates for this award. The criteria are as follows:
- This Award is given to a retired MME professional that provided professional and outstanding service to a community or communities. The individual must exemplify personal characteristics of honesty, fairness, respect, and trust. Use his/her abilities to mentor others in the profession and have a record of volunteer service to the MME organization to further the profession.
- Describe the activities the Nominee has participated in which would qualify them for the Patriarch Award. Please attach additional information, articles, reports that further substantiate the nomination.
Lastly, we plan to begin the process of updating the MME history, which currently covers our activities up to 1991. We plan to launch f the updated history at the 2022 MME Winter Institute. It would be greatly appreciated if you could start to collect stories, photos, recollections, etc. and send those to me at avanderberg@miottawa.org.
Al Vanderberg
Chair, Experience Committee
Ottawa County Administrator
Al Vanderberg has served as the Ottawa County administrator since 2003. Previously he served as deputy county administrator for Kent County (1999-2003), city manager for South Haven (1991-1999), and assistant city manager for Greenville (1988-1990). You may reach him at 616-738-4068 avanderberg@miottawa.org.