Hi. I wanted to take a moment to thank the APA Leadership for all the hard work everyone’s been putting in over the course of the spring and summer. Since the San Francisco conference, we’ve been able to achieve a number of milestones, including:
1. An adopted Development Plan and Budget.
2. Action plans for each of APA’s components (AICP, Divisions Council, Chapter Presidents Council, Student Representatives Council) and all of APA’s Committees and task forces, indicating how each of these groups intends to focus their activities on achieving the pertinent objectives of the Development Plan (this is a first). There will be regular reporting to the Board of progress made on these plans.
3. Substantial progress on the Communications Plan, with training of APA Leadership in one of the most important and basic of skills, communicating with the press.
4. Being recognized as a “go-to” resource for information on a wide range of planning issues.
5. A plan for focusing the efforts of APA as a whole and APA components in responding to the recent disasters impacting the Gulf Coast.
I would particularly like to thank Paul Farmer and APA staff for their tireless efforts involving a lot of evenings and weekends in getting APA geared up to respond to the Gulf Coast emergency, Ethel Sheffer and others in the Chapter Presidents Council for pulling together ideas and suggestions for how APA ought to be responding, and Mary Kay Peck for agreeing to head up a task force of representatives of APA’s components charged with coordinating, further defining and advancing the list of six items the Leadership developed in Buffalo. To refresh your memory, these items are as follows:
1. Establish and be able to convey the planning principles that need to be embodied within disaster preparedness, mitigation and recovery planning.
2. Focus our efforts on channeling volunteers, financial and other resources to assist in the recovery and advance our Development Plan objectives.
3. Use Community Planning Teams to address a variety of planning, rebuilding, mitigation, and other needs. (For instance, the sponsorship or adoption of a particular community’s planning needs.)
4. Focus on building planning capacity to address immediate rebuilding needs, and assist other communities with disaster preparedness planning.
5. Use existing APA opportunities, conferences and venues to focus on these issues.
6. Articulate how our members can be involved on a personal basis and help build the capacity for planning.
Again, thank you for your hard work and your commitment. I’m honored to be working with such a dedicated group.
Dave Siegel, AICP
President American Planning Association