As you ready your communities to close out December and kick off the new year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2023. Your willingness to share your expertise, your commitment to developing your skills as well as those of your staff, and your dedication to advancing professional local government management have made this another remarkable year for ICMA.

Highlights this year include:

• Launching the new ICMA Learning Lab, a state-of-the-art learning management platform to support your lifelong learning objectives.
• Successfully piloting the new Bob Turner Scholars Internship program, which creates opportunities for college and high school students to work with local governments.
• Boosting upward mobility through training opportunities as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Economic Mobility and Opportunity program.
• Organizing another successful National Brownfields Conference; this year’s program in Detroit attracted more than 2,700 people dedicated to creating sustainable communities.
• Updating Tenets 1, 4, 9, and 11 of the ICMA Code of Ethics based on the suggestions and comments from more than 2,800 members.
• Continuing to support global programs in the Philippines and our Southeast Asian Fellows.

Probably, most significant to me was the ICMA Annual Conference in Austin. It had been 15 years since I made the journey to Austin to become city manager there. In miles, it wasn’t that far because I was coming from Fort Worth. But the distance from my childhood in Pontiac, Michigan, felt monumental. Standing on the stage at the annual conference, I felt as though I had come full circle.

And what a success that conference was with a record-breaking 5,500+ attendees there to share innovations, leading practices, and creative solutions, as well as making new connections and rekindling old friendships. We’re looking forward in 2024 to our annual conference in Pittsburgh and  a new approach to regional conferences—one in Boston and one in Palm Springs focusing on artificial intelligence in local government. Stay tuned for more details.

As we embark on a new year, let’s continue to build on our many achievements and one more. Our global engagement strategy envisions an interconnected local government world that fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange on a global scale. Your active engagement in this journey is crucial to realizing this ambitious vision.

As this is the time of year to count our blessings, I want to express my gratitude to our dedicated  staff, our visionary  board, and to you, our valued members. You are the driving force behind everything we do, and I am honored to serve this tremendous organization.