MAA President's Message
September Message
There are many people that came together to put together the 47th Annual Summer Conference of the Michigan Assessors Association. This undertaking represents a tremendous amount of work and collaboration. I cannot thank enough our conference co-chairs who made this conference run so smoothly, Matthew Raftary and Linda Stevenson. They put together some great education, the fabulous Communication Symposium and some very fun conference activities. Check out the photos in this magazine’s conference section.
Thank you to everyone on the conference committee and the golf committee for all their hard work and planning. Thank you to Michael Racklyeft and the Awards Committee for their hard work putting together the Awards Breakfast. Congratulations to this year’s award winners!
I was greatly honored to be the one to inform David Heinowski, the winner of the 2019 Subscribing Member Award, that he was the last and final winner of the Robert Eckhart Subscribing Member Award. Earlier this year, the MAA Board of Directors passed a resolution renaming the Subscribing Member Award as the “David M. Heinowski Subscribing Member Award”, much to David’s surprise.
Thank you to the Communication Symposium Moderator Philip Mastin for providing an interesting and lively forum. Thank you to the participants; State Representative Julie Brixie, MTT Chairman Steven Bieda, Romulus Mayor LeRoy Burcroff, Larry Steckelberg, Bari Johnson, David Maturen and Manny Lentine for sharing their insights and experiences.
Thank you to Shila Kiander and Nathan Stein for presenting an enlightening professional speaking and communication seminar. If you missed this seminar, you may want to check out the two communications books that Shila highlighted: Can You Hear Me? How To Connect with People in a Virtual World by Nick Morgan and If I Understood you, Would I have This Look on My Face? By Alan Alda.
Finally, thank you to Keri Miles and Sean Mulchay of Michigan Department of Treasury and Leonard Kutschman of the State Tax Commission for the Treasury Property Services Division update.
Thanks to our exhibitors, attendees and sponsors. Without you, this conference would not be possible! Looking forward to Conference 2020 to be held at Shanty Creek August 9-12, 2020. Hope to see you there!!
Paula Jastifer, President