In Touch with Tennessee
A Milestone for Tennessee Municipalities and MTAS Service
Step into a celebration of service and knowledge as we toast to the 75th anniversary of the Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS). With the agency's long-standing dedication to Tennessee municipalities, this episode is a treasure trove of history, evolution, and triumph. Hear the voices of MTAS veterans and a steadfast customer who'll share how the service has expanded from simple assistance to sophisticated management, especially in police services and training programs.
The heart of our episode lies in the tales of camaraderie and professional growth that have defined MTAS's legacy. We pay homage to those who've built and nurtured the agency's knowledge base, from dedicated librarians to the consultants who've fortified city financial administration through certification programs. Their stories, interspersed with anecdotes of international outreach in Romanian local governments, underscore the profound connections and shared expertise that continue to shape MTAS's contributions to public service.
Step into a celebration of service and knowledge as we toast to the 75th anniversary of the Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS). With the agency's long-standing dedication to Tennessee municipalities, this episode is a treasure trove of history, evolution, and triumph. Hear the voices of MTAS veterans and a steadfast customer who'll share how the service has expanded from simple assistance to sophisticated management, especially in police services and training programs.
The heart of our episode lies in the tales of camaraderie and professional growth that have defined MTAS's legacy. We pay homage to those who've built and nurtured the agency's knowledge base, from dedicated librarians to the consultants who've fortified city financial administration through certification programs. Their stories, interspersed with anecdotes of international outreach in Romanian local governments, underscore the profound connections and shared expertise that continue to shape MTAS's contributions to public service.
In 1949, Tennessee Municipal League Director Herb Bingham saw the need for technical assistance for municipalities as they were rapidly multiplying across the state. Bingham proposed creation of the Municipal Technical Advisory Service, or MTAS as we know it today. To the General Assembly, to the General Assembly, the bill, which had the sponsorship of six senators, was signed by Governor Gordon Browning on April 15, 1949, and MTAS was established, Celebrating 75 years of existence this year. Mtas continues to fulfill Bingham's vision of providing technical assistance to Tennessee municipalities. In addition, MTAS offers extensive training programs for municipal officers and employees. Hi and welcome to In Touch with Tennessee, a podcast of the University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service. We're honored today to have as guests five current and former MTAS employees who've played an integral part in the history of the agency, as well as one of the longtime customers of MTAS. So can we go around the table and have each of you introduce yourselves, say, your title and the number of years you've been associated with MTAS?
Speaker 2:I'm Frances Adams O'Brien and my title is librarian and I've been with MTAS 24 years this year.
Speaker 3:And I'm Arnetha Loveday and I'm an administrative assistant and I've been with MTAS for 45 years, about to be 46 at the end of the month.
Speaker 4:Hi, my name is Roger Campbell the, the current Assistant City Manager of the City of Maryville, and I've been associated and connected with MTAS for 49 and a half years.
Speaker 5:My name is Mike Tala. I was an employee of MTAS for 33 years, serving as a management consultant, as assistant director and then executive director of the agency.
Speaker 6:I'm Rex Barton. I was a police management consultant for MTAS for 28 years.
Speaker 7:And I'm Pat Hardy and I was a general management consultant, matching Mike, for 33 years.
Speaker 1:Great. So, taking a look back at MTAS history, we're going to go randomly selecting significant moments of unforgettable employees through the years for our guests to discuss. So first of all let's talk about the evolution of police services at MTAS when I came to 1995,.
Speaker 6:I was the first field consultant in police management for MTAS ever had and I think the most significant evolution that I saw during that time mirrors MTAS is for the first 50 years we did not do training. It was a separate agency called the Center for Government Training that provided training for state and local government employees in Tennessee. When we took on training tasks from the Center for Government Training, huge, huge change for MTAS, starting with one coordinator coordinating training classes that the technical consultants and management consultants served as instructors, to a full-time training program Now that employs probably close to 10 people, some of them doing training, still coordinating the training that subject matter experts at MTAS put together. And that's been a huge change for the agency and especially for me as a police consultant, going from being one-on-one with people in the field to being able to sit in a room with 25, 30, 40 people and convey the same message.
Speaker 7:And there's a shift too. I remember, rex, we used to before you came, we used to do really elementary-level assistance to police agencies, like I remember giving the entry-level assistance to police agencies, like I remember giving the entry-level police tests all across the state, I mean for entry-level officers.
Speaker 6:So when you came up to the sophistication factor quite a bit, we got to engage more in the management side of the equation and one of the things we've done a lot of in the 28 years is really building an assessment center process to hire new police chiefs, new fire chiefs, those sorts of things Really enhanced the ability to get good people in the job.
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, there was another change too. We had consultants up to 1981, when the Reagan administration came in and eliminated a lot of grants. The consultants that we had at that time were on grants, and I don't remember how long, but we went a long stretch of time before we were able to hire recs with state money, our money, and not grant money.
Speaker 4:And I think one other important concept that you guys have done over the years is really translate some of the federal regulations that have come down for public safety and law enforcement and so forth. One of the things that we look to in PASPAR is okay, this was passed last month. Really, what does it mean?
Speaker 3:I think one of the highlights as an administrative assistant for me was the opportunity to and this was before Rex even came on board was to actually actually go to the city of Maryville when the police department was trying to get accredited, and I was actually the person on site the whole time that they needed things tapped immediately. So, mtas, let me go to there to work with them, for it was about, I think, two weeks.
Speaker 6:The chief still speaks highly of you.
Speaker 3:They're my favorite police department.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of the city of Maryville, we're lucky to have city manager Roger Campbell with us, who's worked with MTAS for quite a few years. Talk about some of the projects that MTAS has worked with Maryville on Okay.
Speaker 4:But before I start on that, that MTAS has worked with Maribel on Okay. But before I start on that, I had the opportunity to work with both Herb Bingham and an MTAS assistant, bob Lepus, which I thought was Herb's equal, and I learned my basic information and knowledge of local Tennessee government from those two back in 1975. So MTAS gave me kind kind of solid foundation going forward. As for projects, harmenta was direct.
Speaker 4:Huge project for us was to get accreditation for the police department. Mtas supplies the detailed list and helped us go through step by step by step and we achieved that fairly quickly with MTAS's assistance. The other big thing is an ongoing project. Mtas is responsible for the codification of all of our codes and support plus the updating of them, and we're currently in the process of doing that and if I'm not mistaken, we may be the largest city that MTAS does codification work for now and that's a highly important function. And then another project that we've had over the years we've basically, with the assistance of MTAS, built a personnel department from ground zero. That started back in the early 80s and still growing and so forth. But MTASC has been a very it's been very instrumental in us growing and making sure that we're doing it correctly, and so forth.
Speaker 1:Because you've worked with MTAS for a few years can you share some stories about former executive directors? And then you know, I'm sure all of you have some stories you can share.
Speaker 4:Well, I was. You know, the first executive director I met was Dr Hobday.
Speaker 4:Dr Hobday was very formal, so I was very always on my guard against the wrath of Dr Hobday. He was a very smart guy. He already is a ref and Dr Hove he's a very smart guy, but I did not want to make him think of me as being someone that was, with the logical, unknowledgeable, so I was very careful. So I was always yes sir, no sir, around him. But he was a great gentleman. Cl Overman and I were personal friends along with the former city manager of Maryville, mary Hensley. A lot of traveling stories with CL. Cl knew the city management job functioned from the ground up so as a director of MTASC he had probably the best insight into city management. In this state. The council management form is still a minority form of government in terms of that, but CL was always ready to help improve the council manager forum. It was also fun to be with sit around. We'd sit around the afternoon at conferences, a few drinks, talk about what could be done to make local governments' incentives better.
Speaker 1:Hey, Armentha, I'm sure you have some stories about executive directors.
Speaker 3:Yes, I've known them all, except for the very first one. Actually, I've been lucky enough to get along well with all of them, as far as I know.
Speaker 3:I guess too, since I know Dr Hobday more than the rest of the people. Probably he hired me when I came to work here and so since I know Dr Hobday more than the rest of the people, probably he hired me when I came to work here and he, like Roger said he was very formal and all the tell a funny story about him is that he was very also I guess the right word not stingy but frugal, I guess, or whatever. But they used to make fun because when he would go to the restroom or whatever and wash his hands with the paper towels, he would set the paper towels out to dry so that we wouldn't use them all up. So that was always a big funny thing that all the guys would talk about the paper towels in the bathroom.
Speaker 3:I'll let the rest comment on the others.
Speaker 2:Well, I have a story about Bob Schwartz. He hired me. Let's see, he was director at M-Tows from 90, is that correct to 2007,. 1990 to 2007. This is a funny story about him, but I think it gives you some insight into his character. We always well we used to do a lot of Halloween parties, and one Halloween, bob agreed to be the wizard in a group of people who dressed up as the Wizard of Oz characters. I mean literally. He allowed us to put green plastic over his door and it said Emerald City. Over the door, next to the door, it said pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. And we had the yellow brick road coming from the front door to Bob's office and he wore this big bow tie that was polka-dotted, red and white. He was a sport.
Speaker 6:Bob's voice hired me in 1995 when I retired. Last summer he drove from Columbia, South Carolina, to Knoxville to be at the retirement party. It was impressive Dickens had him there. I told him. I said, Bob, I can't believe you did that. He said, Rex, it's no different than you driving five hours to Jackson all those years when you covered the whole state.
Speaker 7:I said well, actually it is a little different. You paid me to do that. Looking back, one of the things I was so impressed with Bob about is what he did for us technology-wise when I first came to MTS and CL had hired me and I was only here a couple months until CL moved on and then Bob came in. But I didn't really know how to use a computer In my city management profession I had always had other people did that for me and so I came here and here you were with this. Now we'd look at it as this big, old-fashioned square box with this thing around it, you know, the big, huge monitor, and Bob brought us from that into the modern-day technology-wise and I've always thought that's his most lasting contribution and I would like to point out to all the executive directors one of their best abilities was to create the environment of where cities should be going, and with technology, with philosophy and training.
Speaker 4:So I think that has been a very strong point, particularly the training. Once CGP went away, I saw a very, very great improvement in terms of the field consultants who were able to deal directly on a constant basis with the various department heads and people, technical people and so forth.
Speaker 5:Dr Homme Day hired. I was in the period of time I served him in a human presence. With his knowledge of city government he put together a municipal manual that covered everything. Back in the days before the Cures. Everything that went out the door was typewritten and our staffing wasn't that large at the time. But Dr Hovday read everything that went out to the students to be sure that it was on track.
Speaker 4:Getting back to Dr Hovday and his relationship with Herb Bingham, which I think provided that foundational piece for the growth of M-Test. Her being would always contact Dr Hobday when they were developing legislation to help cities and so forth, just to see, okay, is this correct? Is this correct? That partnership worked wonders.
Speaker 6:I only worked under a handful of directors but, as you're hearing, these different directors hired everybody in the room, one of the things I think it says about these guys they made really, really good decisions in hiring people, because throughout the 28 years I've worked here with folks who were here long before me and the folks who come after I've always kind of figured out how did I get a job here? Because there's some really bright, sharp, experienced folks that surround you. They just did a good job hiring.
Speaker 4:Well, mtas has brought the government in Tennessee on a long journey of improvement. Just talking to people who were in the local area but I'm going to go back to when they were in the 40s and 50s and so forth what we have today is night and day improvement over what it was back in the 40s and 50s at the local level. Mtasc was primarily responsible for that improvement, I think, amongst staff and so forth. And the training program of newly elected officials I think has been very, very important because I think they understand better when they first take office now what their roles are.
Speaker 7:I had the same experience you did, Rex. I was here for a couple weeks and all these really smart people around me and I thought to myself they've made a horrible mistake.
Speaker 4:You didn't have the imposter syndrome did you?
Speaker 2:I had that too. I was like oh my God.
Speaker 5:You all commented earlier. I think I meant to go back to this and I just wanted to point out that when I came in for my interview with IPS, I'd already been approved by and passed by Dr Hockney, but I had to get approval of IPS to find out I was coming. I came by the office, which was on White Street, and provided transportation in my pickup truck from White Street over to the campus for the IPS interview, which saved in-pass gas money, and that was with Bob Hutchinson.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think probably too. Before we switch to the next subject, just so we've covered, I think, every director, more or less Dr Miner was here just for a few years but as far as a director he was probably the most people-oriented director. He was very kind and a very caring director, but he was not here a long time. He moved back. He came from Utah and then he moved back to Utah. And one other person of course is Mike who took over several times. He was assistant director and then became the director and things like that and a lot of stuff. I think that really helped Bob to have Mike's talent to work with.
Speaker 4:And I would say about Mike he is the best utility player that I've seen. Mike has always stepped in at various locations various times. He's also very positive, very knowledgeable and very encouraging of people and professionals out in the field. So Mike has been a very, very valuable piece of the progress. Thank you.
Speaker 2:We've conducted interviews with folks throughout the state for our anniversary, for a video, and one of the comments that comes to mind is Steve Thompson, who was also one of our executive directors, and he talked about how, when he came to MTAS, he inherited this great management team, and it was a team that Bob put together and it was Mike talent, sharon Rawlins, lisa Shipley.
Speaker 5:I said it's late.
Speaker 2:Okay, in training, in training, and Mike was part of that group and Steve talked about how that group was well-formed, had plans for moving forward, had a good vision, and he felt like that really took us to the future.
Speaker 1:Roger, you mentioned the Elected Officials Academy. Can we talk a little bit about the creation of that and how that has evolved?
Speaker 7:I can go back as far as Moo. I'll let that pause for a second to sink in. Moo was the first iteration I was involved with. As far as MOO, I'll let that pause for a second to sink in. That's a lesson. Moo was the first iteration I was involved with and that stood for Municipal Officials Orientation, that's right. And it was sort of a one-shot deal that we'd go in and do with the Municipal League Conference and things like that and from there it evolved into the Elected Officials Academy and I might probably share if there was something before Moo. Just very quickly, one of the things there that evolution happened when we started training when we picked up.
Speaker 6:training was when Moo evolved into the elected officials academy.
Speaker 5:The relationship between MTAS and CGT as far as training was concerned early on was somewhat limited. Cgt was in charge, set the topics, et cetera, et cetera. In fact we did not do much training at all consulting-wise. I remember the first training that I did was budgeting and then, I guess, seven locations across the state. It was a two-person training effort and I did it with a different person in each one of the seven locations, which was a little challenging. But once things developed more, we sat down with CGT and put together a training session for elected officials, and this is the mayor and the council the first. We did several test sessions of that in the beginning. The first one that I was involved with we did a session in Cleveland and did it at Holiday Inn in Cleveland and we had 40 or 50 elected officials at that session and just to show you how bright we were in putting it together, we did two eight-hour events.
Speaker 2:Goodness, and it was Friday and Saturday. I was at that, I was my first.
Speaker 5:What was amazing to me was the people who were there at the first session were still there at the last session. On top of that, they were engaged in the first session and truly engaged in the last session. They stayed with it all the way through. Of course, it's expanded since then in terms of the courses being offered, but I think it has made a huge service for cities because you take elected officials and no disregard to them whatsoever, but you know they've been running a business all their life and working for somebody all their life and their knowledge of city government is limited. They get elected and they've got to make some decisions and they need some education before those decisions are made.
Speaker 4:And Mike, what makes that so complicated? In this state there are at least one. There's private act cities which they no longer have home rule, and then there's four TCA, defined way of incorporation, and each have a little bit difference on council's mission and authorities and so forth, and able to bring people from all sorts in there and to give them instruction on certain ways of things is very good.
Speaker 2:I was in that first session, those two sessions, and from an MTAs perspective, I love seeing all of our consultants teach and I remember Brett did the whole floaties, workies and sinkies and whatever they were he had the jar with the wastewater in it and Ray Crouch talking about the fire. It was eye-opening for me and I'm sure it was for the participants to go oh my gosh, look at these people in all these different areas of expertise and they teach and they're engaging and they're human. I mean, I just was so impressed. That was when I was like, wow, look at this place that I've gotten hired into.
Speaker 4:And I think that's important because the generation being elected at the council level now are the younger generations. Their knowledge is being formed by what they see on TV from national and state government. To bring it down to the reality of operating a local government is a whole different point of view, a whole different set of actions, and these guys do a good job of bringing them down to reality.
Speaker 1:So we'll circle back to talking about the staff, but I want to ask briefly about another well-known program that MTAS has and that's the Certified Municipal Finance Officer Program. Can someone talk about the creation of that program?
Speaker 5:program. Can someone talk about the creation of that program? That program started when I was chairing the staff meeting that we were having and going around the table for ideas and suggestions, and one of our finance consultants, Dick Davis, raised the point of we need to look at certifying municipal finance officers. You know, we certify police, we certify here, we certify there, All throughout city government. We're not doing anything with finance and that chief financial person in each city is sitting at the table with the city council giving advice and direction, et cetera, et cetera, and they lead the training.
Speaker 5:We picked up on that idea, had a brief meeting with John Norton at the state he was the consul at the time and he said, yeah, we're going to put a bill together and let's see what this looks like. We came back to Dennis Hufford, who was one of our legal consultants, and Dennis drafted the legislation, brought it back to Mr Hardin and he said I'm going to go ahead and submit this, but this year we'll just be dropping it in the bucket, so to speak, and they'll look at it, discuss it and so on and so forth in the public next year before we're able to do anything with this. Well, he dropped it in the bucket. It was grabbed and brought up for a vote. It passed with either only one or two negative votes out of the entire legislature and became locked.
Speaker 5:Our challenge then was getting ready, and that took some time. We did that in cooperation with the comptroller's office overseeing the components of it to be sure everything was right in order. Our consultants did a tremendous job of bringing that together. We were able to hire that. The bill came with additional funding for any tasks that allowed us to hire more financial consultants or training consultants, and I don't know where things stand in terms of stats on it today, but at one point in time we were very, very high in terms of the number of people that had obtained their certification across the state.
Speaker 2:What year was that bill passed? Was it 2007 or 2008? 2007 or 8. Okay, I want to say it was 2007. Well, I know we started spending money in 2008, because that's when we made the renovations in the library, because we had all those people coming and we went from four cubicles to ten. We took the traditional library shelves down, moved everything to the compact mobile shelving and opened up all that space for people. So I think that was around 2008.
Speaker 3:Michelle Buckner, the support staff person that was also able to be hired with that grant money, is still here. She told me that the first class, I believe, of graduates was in 2010. So they gave it a lot of time to get it all ready and everything like that.
Speaker 2:And it's still very well attended today. You know CTAS follow the model and have their own county financial version.
Speaker 5:It is to stop the certification. It has continuing education to it sure it's maintained certification.
Speaker 4:There's currently an effort to give reimbursement of funds to individuals going through that program.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that's meant a lot to cities to have that oversight, a certified financial policy.
Speaker 4:Larger cities have multi-people who have that oversight a certified financial officer. Larger cities have multi-people who have that.
Speaker 2:Most of the smaller towns just have one Right Well, and MTAS actually did some follow-up research to see if there was an impact a few years after the program was implemented, and we did see, at a very basic level, fewer audit findings for cities. So we know that it had an empirical impact. We could see it.
Speaker 4:And it also gave those people management skills that before this was in place they basically just sit and just did whatever they were asked to do. But now I notice, like you say, they feel like they can challenge issues, they can answer questions and can be a real professional when dealing with city finances and the people who basically vote on city finances.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to talking about previous employees at MTAS Standing on the shoulders of the folks at MTAS, if you will.
Speaker 2:I wanted to think about the librarians that MTAS has had and so I went back and I was looking at some things that my predecessor had written up. She did some research to kind of establish the history of the library at MTAS and I found it really interesting. She mentioned that there was the original staff of about five in 1949. And then in 1952, they hired a financial consultant in a librarian and that was the first. It would be a successive hiring and then that person. So then there'd been kind of the. So 1956, miriam Bass came and then 1965, betty Soderman, who you probably know, took the reins, and then in 1980, carol Hewlett took over and she was my predecessor and I came in 1999.
Speaker 2:And talking about technology and the impact of technology on impasse, the library certainly was impacted by all of that. Things went from we had an expansive newspaper clipping file that went away in the early 90s and they kind of stopped doing the newspaper clipping in the 80s and the kind of late 90s. But I stand on their shoulders the work that those ladies did. They were professionals, had a vision of what information services could look like at M-TAS and they made it happen with the support of management and consultants and the idea was to serve consultants and then it broadened that to serve cities in the state and get work externally. So that's the shoulders that I stand on.
Speaker 4:And I think a lot of cities really really appreciate the informational ability about the M-Test. We if we want to see how many cities have this type of program, I just pick up the phone and call. Can you check with the ABCD and see if they have the program and the components of the program and generally I'll get a report back very quickly.
Speaker 6:Since Emsley is probably one of the most legendary people to work with. There are some legends here and I had the good fortune of working next door to him, next office over, so if I had a question I didn't send a two-minute email or pick up the phone, I actually walked around the corner and asked the question. Almost all the time he said you know, I did some research on that and he'd pull open a file drawer and have a folder an inch thick of research. He'd done that. Could talk about it up that length for hours, and one of the great moments in time stands out to you you could walk into his office and ask him a question. It stunned him. Maybe he had something to say, but that was really rare. It was amazing.
Speaker 6:When he wrote an opinion. You could ask him what time it was, and three weeks later you would have a 27-page treatise that expounded on the time zones in seven countries, probably.
Speaker 2:Which today our legal consultants still rely on that because of the extensive nature of the research that he put into it.
Speaker 6:Even if the laws have changed, it gives them a foundation to start their own research and getting to the point where we're able to store that electronically instead of him having to go to the file drawer, was huge huge.
Speaker 4:And I find this sort of amusing. Many city attorneys, staff attorneys all pose the question.
Speaker 7:Well, what did Sid think about this? Wow, and that's another way we stood on the shoulders of each other was maintaining that body of knowledge. So when you do a study or something that's fairly comprehensive or not, even even if you just do an opinion, you send it in to Francis at the library and they catalog it correctly and the rest of us, for years, can go in there and get that same information and build on it.
Speaker 2:Well, that term body of knowledge was coined by Mike back when we created what was called knowledge base. At the time we had a database full of legal opinions, a database full of job descriptions, RFPs, surveys. They were all in separate letters, notes, databases. Well, around 2002 we decided to bring it all together and Mike's kind of way of describing it was this is the end-to-end body of knowledge, and we still think of it that way.
Speaker 4:Well, mike was AI before AI.
Speaker 2:Maybe AI did something different.
Speaker 5:Vision. You see, that's one of the things I guess has always been a really positive thing is the ability of consultants to rely on each other to work together as teams. I remember Ray Crouch and I he was our fire consultant. We did a study for the city of Chattanooga, a comprehensive study, and while Ray was in Nashville at the time I was in Oxford we met in Cookville and in a hotel and sat down. He was on one side of the table, I was on the other, both with laptops, and we wrote our report. Before Chattanooga he was writing a chapter and the other one editing. As we went. We got it all put together in a very short period of time. It was an example of a joint effort, teamwork effort, that really produced some positive results for the assembly generally.
Speaker 4:And speaking of teamwork, I think you guys give our staffs an example of what good teamwork is and model it that it really helps us in a bigger general way of management and administration, because they see the teamwork effort that the M-BEST puts into things.
Speaker 6:It's a time-honored tradition. I actually think it may be codified in the law that firemen and policemen are supposed to give each other a hard time. But I've got to say Ray Krause predated me here about two years. I learned so much about the fire service from him. Francis mentioned sitting in the Elected Officials Academy listening to Ray teach that class to those elected officials. He was incredible. He was very knowledgeable. One time we were teaching the elected officials academy in Knoxville and Ray got caught in traffic in the middle of Tennessee. We called him. It was going to be late getting there. I had listened to him teach it so many times I could do his PowerPoint presentation. I could not answer the first question but I set it up. So when he walked into the door I turned to the class and I said police cars, and they went good. I said fire trucks they went bad.
Speaker 1:So who are some other previous employees who might stand out to you?
Speaker 6:Sharon Rollins. Sharon was a public works consultant but she married doing public works consulting with managing the technical team and remember, none of us on the technical team know anything about anybody else's work. She managed the one and onlys when we only had one police consultant, one HR consultant, one fire consultant. Now we have multiples of all of those the utility consultants with water, wastewater and public works. She knew nothing about what we did, but she managed us effectively. She was such a professional person it was incredible and when she retired a couple of years ago it was like a huge bullet in my life.
Speaker 7:So about the world of her Someone that stands out but is sort of not out front was um brett ward, and I always thought brett, in his his position, he was, uh, was he strictly wastewater treatment consultant or he did water? He did water too, okay, but you could go into a city hall. You know, wastewater treatment isn't something that most people pay attention to until they really need to. But those employees in your typical wastewater treatment lab or wastewater treatment operation in the city, every one of them and he was the only one he worked statewide every one of them may not know a lot about MTAS, but they knew Brett Warren. He had infiltrated that deep into all of those systems and I think that's a real good illustration of how far MTAS can go into the operations of your city for you.
Speaker 6:So those guys are not a city hall, they're different guys.
Speaker 7:No, they're out there in the field, yeah.
Speaker 2:Talking about Sharon. I remember she did the public works portion of EOA and she stood up very prim and proper lady, you know her hair was always in place and she said we're gonna talk trash. And then I was just so impressed with a woman in the public works field who was such an authority. Of course she was an engineer by trade but she was very active with the Tennessee Public Works Association and she did a lot of publishing in their magazine and always was getting awards, and a very interesting person.
Speaker 3:I'm going to come in with a different point of view as a support staff person, not necessarily a consultant, of course I've been here the longest of everybody, but I've had a lot of people in my life ask me how could you stay at this department this long? And then I look back and I think, why not? Some of these people are the greatest friends I've ever had in my life, starting with Dr Hobday. That generation all the way through. I've never I like everybody.
Speaker 4:And she's right. If I don't know exactly who to contact, she's the person I contact to see who I should contact.
Speaker 3:Probably the person, though, that helped me be who I am in this job was Ann Lowe, and man, oh my gosh, she had it under control. I don't know, but she was always so kind and she listened to people and took the time. What was Ann's? Position exactly she was like the office manager and I still stay in touch with her Everybody. I try to anyway today.
Speaker 6:There's been so many great, great people, it's hard to sit here and pick one out. That's the great thing about working here super, super people and, as a continued evolution of the employees.
Speaker 4:It gets better and better and better, I think.
Speaker 2:I would like to say we have some really great customers too, People like. Roger can always fall on you to talk about what you do and be a part of the planning process and you bring great insights. But we just have so many great customers and they serve on our advisory committee and provide guidance and really words of wisdom.
Speaker 6:It's interesting you're saying that, because 90% of what we deliver to a customer, we learn from another customer.
Speaker 7:Right, and I was just thinking that that's true. Yeah, and their willingness to share is a big deal.
Speaker 6:Mm-hmm, talk to a great consultant that's stealing from somebody and taking it and delivering it to somebody else.
Speaker 4:And that's what I want. I want to know what other cities around the state are doing, but sometimes you need to have more than that Right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you need to have more than that. You know that, but then okay, but what should we be doing?
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, that's where I bounce it off of. Well, federal law says this, state law says this. They're doing this. Let's get it together and see what the right way is.
Speaker 1:So I've been asked to ask you all about an MTAS consulting trip to Romania.
Speaker 7:Of course the listener can't see Mike and I smiling.
Speaker 1:That's a little bit of an outreach.
Speaker 7:When are you going to do that? I can't remember 95, 96.
Speaker 7:95, 96. There's a reason that Mike will remember this date and I'll share that reason here shortly. But there was a grant from USAID was the institution that contracted with UT and there was this long, comprehensive effort to help establish local democracies in Romania, and this was right after the dictator Ceausescu had been assassinated. So, among a bunch of other things that happened before it landed in Entas's lap. When it landed in Entas's lap, four of us went to Romania for some weeks and pretty much around the entire country and worked with local officials and young up-and-coming officials and even students who wanted to someday be in government in Romania, and our goal was to teach them about how local government can operate effectively and help them establish local democracies. Is that a good nutshell of the effort? Mike probably was in behind the scenes of it a little more than me.
Speaker 5:No, that's good.
Speaker 7:I said, the reason that Mike will remember this date was and we had some hard days over here. We'd get up early, we'd start with groups, work with groups all day, end at the end of the day, and I think through most of the trip, we had two translators, one or two, maybe two or three translators, I can't remember and there were all sorts of strange things that happened on this trip. At one point we said where's the translator? We need the translator. We can't find the translator. I said where's Mike? He said I don't know, maybe he's working with the translator. Little did we know. That turned out to be true. Mike later married the translator and they are still married to this day. So, as well as a lot of local government assistance, we had some romance on the side.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a very productive trip.
Speaker 6:You all ended up bringing another of those folks to the US and tourist Tennessee cities.
Speaker 7:Yeah, part of that grant was we brought 25 of them back here for a couple weeks.
Speaker 5:We brought them around various cities, small towns, nashville, what? Where Down in the county, where again, it was the mayor of Nashville who got elected governor.
Speaker 6:President President.
Speaker 5:And we had time to sit at the table with them, spending a lot of time talking about how they operate in a city as large as Nashville, and it was overall. It was a good effort. I think we'll make a benefit from our efforts. I was going to say that everything I hear that's coming out of the old-age-drew Europe government seems like it's improving and improving at the local level.
Speaker 3:So you guys were a foundational piece of that change and that was Pat Mike. Joe, Joe Muscatone and Sid, and then Jim Finan and Joe went somewhere one year ahead.
Speaker 5:Joe and I went ahead, you went ahead okay.
Speaker 2:Joe Muscatone.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Joe, One of the things and, Francis, I know you had mentioned this was about the technology of MTAS and how that has evolved. And then, you know, wrapping things up, talk a little bit about MTAS moving forward.
Speaker 6:MTAS was already utilizing computers when I came, but I think I was in the first group that started using laptops. And now when I go into the field, I have a laptop, I've got an iPad and I can set up the iPad facing two or three other people at a table and show up at a slideshow without having to hook up to a projector, that sort of thing. We used to go to hotel rooms and dial up or call into the system to download emails and now the emails are on my phone driving down the road in the car. The database you use Marmentha and see it as the database before we developed the body of knowledge computerized. But being able to find it sitting in a city hall said yes, we did something like that. I've got a sample of this and pull it up on their computer off of our website and print it for them right there, They've got their job description.
Speaker 7:That's been some big changes just in the 28 years I was here. Or a lot of us have a little portable printer we carry with our laptops.
Speaker 4:We printed that for you right there, we did for a while.
Speaker 7:Yes, Long gone were the days of. Can you get me a resolution in front of the city council for their meeting next month? Now folks will call and we have the ability to produce a resolution for you. It meets your needs within a couple of hours, If not a couple of hours, but it's a couple of days, you're not using chat GPT for that are you.
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 7:Our technology is well reined in by Francis and our really good IT people.
Speaker 4:But I do think you guys are going to be at the forefront of whatever happens at the local government level when it comes to this whole discussion about AI and so forth. The state's setting up a task force, which I hope MCAS gets involved in, because they're going to be addressing both state and local governments future with.
Speaker 2:AI and that type of technology. I'll talk just for a minute about a person, a couple of people, but also a pivotal moment as far as technology goes, so pandemic. We all know what happened and, at the same time, ips was looking into coming up with a plan to allow people to work from home on a regular basis in a structured sort of way. Well, justin O'Hara, who's our IT administrator, started seeing the handwriting on the wall about OK, we're going to need more equipment, we're going to need to have a plan here how we're going to make it possible for people to work from home. Well, when March happened that March 2020, that guy just flew into action. He had computers at home, setting them up for people and getting them shipped out to people, buying monitors, buying keyboards, buying everything he needed to get set up, and he just worked constantly and got us all set up. So we had very little downtime. We could continue doing everything we needed to do, except for field visits, but we were still in touch with our customers. We still had meetings.
Speaker 6:I recall the decision was made about Wednesday, the following Monday everyone was going to work at home and on Monday we had almost everybody up and running in the wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the pinnacle of patience and always ahead of the game on security issues and the latest software. Of course he's leaving Enpass now for OIT, but he will still be a part of the UT security offensive. But he has, as far as technology and Lisa Shipley as well with our website and working with moving us from Lotus Notes, which we had been with for 20-something years, to Drupal-based information system. Those guys have been pivotal and very important to getting us to where we are today. There's Bob Schwartz had a great foundation and even Rex did some technology kind of things. He was a technology early adopter testing things out. You know, for me that's the important part about our technology progress.
Speaker 5:When MTAS was created it was placed with the University of Tennessee and I don't know this, at least from my perspective. That gave MTAS the ability to operate politically independently. When we're in a city providing consultation, we're not doing that for this person or that person, we're doing it for the city and we can call the issue as we see it, without concern about this person or that person, the issue as we see it, without concern about this person or that person. I think that has made a huge, huge difference over time. We've had some cities that have innovated that probably would not have innovated had it not been for MTAS consultation. And regarding the other thing that I would like to point out is, in in-task consultation we respond to questions for assistance, but consultants also, when they're in the field working on things they've got their eyes open and if they see a problem, if they see something going in the wrong direction, they bring that to the city's attention at that time.
Speaker 2:That integration is tremendous and allows the consultant to do its job and gives the city a continuous review.
Speaker 5:And that doesn't have to be with a consultant on site. A consultant that knows their city very well can see something coming up on the computer, an issue whatever. All that will apply to someone. So I need to give them a heads up and get ready. Those are things that have made consulting for MTAS a tremendous amount of joy and one of the things I've always stressed if you've got a job and you enjoy it, stay with it, get after it. And if you look back over the history of the agency, it has not had that much time. It's had employees retiring when they get old, but it has not had employees leaving and going on to something else. It's been the exception. It's become the showcase for the best and brightest.