Craig’s Corner January 2022

Ringing in the New Year – Are You Ready?

I hope that you had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year’s holiday season, and that 2022 is off to a good start for you.  In Montgomery County, we went from a beautiful New Year’s Day with a high of 72 to 3-5 inches of snow and 20-degree wind chills on January 3rd.  We certainly experience all four seasons in Virginia – sometimes within a few days of each other!

While I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions, I do like to take time to reflect over the past year, and think about what I want to start doing in the new year, as well as what I want to stop doing.  As I’ve gotten older, more of the things I want to start (or continue) doing seem to center around family and spending more time with those who matter to me. Nearly all of the things I want to stop doing are related to areas that bring me stress or that leave me unfulfilled.

For 2022, finding avenues to “Reconnect, Refresh, and Recharge” with our VLGMA membership is very important to me.  In previous newsletters, I’ve mentioned how I hope each of you will also find ways to reconnect with VLGMA, be it through volunteering for a committee, offering to be a mentor to a young professional, or simply committing to attending a VLGMA event.  Just as important is finding ways for us to refresh and recharge in the upcoming year.  I intend to work hard this year to be “present in the moment,” rather than trying to simultaneously address the myriad of issues that land on my plate each day, and not really giving focus to any one of them.

I also want to challenge each of you to think about how you can give back to your profession in the upcoming year.  This can be as simple as encouraging department heads and supervisors to pursue continuing education in local government leadership.  It can also involve becoming more involved in VLGMA, and exploring ways you can contribute to your professional organization.

Each of us has an important role in our organizations and in our communities, and in times of political challenges and turbulence, it is critical that we provide steady leadership to our local governments.  By setting an example of ethical and impartial leadership during these times, others see the value of local government professional government, and hopefully we can provide that “steady anchor” when the environment around us becomes challenging.

Our next opportunity to gather together is coming up soon, at Hotel 24 in Staunton for our 2022 VLGMA Winter Conference.  The conference will be held February 16-18, and our theme for the conference is “The Big Reveal.”   The past few years have been challenging in many ways for local government and our communities. The winter conference sessions will provide us an opportunity to reflect and explore what the past few years have revealed about our communities, while providing innovative and creative ideas to allow us to move forward based on those revelations.

Please join me in welcoming our new VLGMA member for the month - Sonya Tate, Student, Mary Baldwin University.

Best wishes for a great 2022 – I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks in Staunton!

All the best,

Craig