President's Message

Hugh Earnest tendered his resignation as our chapter president in mid January
due to a number of personal and medical issues. Thank you, to Hugh, for your leadership
over the past year and a half. Below, I have included a segment from his resignation letter.

I want to take a moment to remind everyone about the upcoming conference March 12th and 13th in Hot Springs at the Embassy Suites. This will be an excellent conference, especially with our guest speaker Donald Elliot, FAICP, the author of “A Better Way to Zone”.  There is a short review of this book in this newsletter, so take the time and see what all the excitement is about. This conference is about getting back to the basics of planning. We have focused recently on the timely topic of sustainability, so we decided that it was time to get back to the “nuts and bolts”. For those of you with AICP keeping track of your CM credits, we have applied for five regular CM credits and 1.5 ethics CM credits for the conference. Don’t worry about having to sit through yet another boring ethics session; we have a fun and “secret” game planned for you. So those of you (you know who you are) waiting until the last minute to complete your credits, you better hurry and register!

In addition to the APA Spring Conference, we will be conducting a planning commissioner training workshop on March 11, in Hot Springs. This year, we are providing $25 registration to any commissioner attending the training and the Spring Conference. For those of you interested in becoming a trainer, please come and sit in on the session. I promise we will not charge you, nor will we pick on you to come speak.  We are always in need of new trainers as I have preached in the past.
 
I will be attending my first Chapter Presidents’ Council meeting and National Conference this April in Minneapolis. Please let me know if there is any particular item or concern that you would like brought up at the CPC meeting or national. I do not want to be a single voice at the national level; I wish to represent all of us. Being in the world of transportation planning, I am sometimes unaware of the issues of sign regulations, storm water, and housing, etc. so please help keep me up to speed.
 
Keep in touch and I look forward to seeing everyone next month.
 Dianne