Dale Martin
City Manager
September 9, 2016 1:00 a.m.
As a member of the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA), I am eligible to obtain the designation of “Credentialed Manager.” The ICMA web site declares that this voluntary program “recognizes professional local government managers qualified by a combination of education and experience, adherence to high standards of integrity, and an assessed commitment to lifelong learning and professional development.” Several hundred city and county managers, including 117 in Florida, have earned the “ICMA-CM” designation.
To earn the “ICMA-CM” designation requires three initial steps. First, eligibility for the program must be verified. This includes full membership in the ICMA, appointment to a full-time position, and a degree from an accredited university.
Second, a candidate must complete an Applied Knowledge Assessment. In partnership with the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, the ICMA developed this assessment to assess professional skills and abilities. It is a multiple choice series of questions to measure knowledge of local government principles and practices and how to apply those facets in management situations. Scores are provided for seventeen of the eighteen core practices for local government effective leadership. These practices include Integrity, Staff Effectiveness, Budgeting, Financial Analysis, Strategic Planning, Media Relations, Citizen Service, and other similar professional needs or standards. The eighteenth practice, Personal Development, is not measured by the assessment.
The final step for a candidate is to complete the application and submit the application to the ICMA for review. Applications are accepted quarterly, and subsequently approved in September or October by the ICMA Executive Board.
As indicated earlier, the designation represents a commitment to lifelong learning. An annual obligation to maintain the ICMA-CM designation is to complete forty hours of professional development. This development should be related to the core principles described above. The annual reporting for my forty hours was due at the end of August.
My report indicated several hours of professional development associated with Media Relations. As defined by ICMA, Media Relations encompasses “communicating information to the media in a way that increases public understanding of local government issues and activities and builds a positive relationship with the press.” I have always valued my relationship with local media. It is those editors and reporters that still provide the best source of information related to local government (not Facebook, Twitter, or other social media).
I attributed other professional development to some professional reading. Over the course of the year, I was able to read two local government-related books. The first was Gavin Newsome’s Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government. Mr. Newsome was a former mayor of San Francisco. The book offered insights on how to more effectively use data, not social media, as an aid to policy development. With data becoming more and more available (as demonstrated at the City Commission meeting by the transportation planner referencing smart phone applications tracking exercise patterns), local governments often have an underutilized tool available to make more effective policy decisions.
Another book that I read was For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places (Peter Kageyama). So many people inevitably link themselves to their community, through its geography, culture, entertainment, or history. I see the connection of many of you with Fernandina Beach. I will always have a tie to Detroit given the history of that community and my formative development in an immediate suburb. The author explores how those connections are formed and offers that those connections can and should be more aggressively used for community and economic development.
Other hours of professional development were devoted to studying the State of Florida Sunshine laws. Each state operates differently with regard to public meetings and public records. Those meetings and records are governed by statutes, so it is imperative that I be fully aware of the operations and implications of those statutes.
My final hours of develop were associated with Personal Development, as I pledged to continue my volunteer work with the national disaster response team of which I have been a member since 2010. Before leaving Connecticut, I was designated as a regional coordinator to assist many small churches and communities recover from inordinate snowfalls during the winter of 2014. I helped craft revised budgets and develop staffing plans for agencies that suffered a drastic loss of income due to reduced participation- many churches had to cancel weekly services due to the heavy snows, resulting in greatly reduced income, which, in turn, crippled the churches’ ability to provide needed social services. It was a very rewarding effort to work with those small groups.
I greatly value the ICMA-CM designation and will continue my professional development efforts each year.