Message from Mayor Mark Senter

Accelerate Indiana Municipalities (AIM) is an organization that assists cities and towns from all over Indiana. We currently have 120 cities and over 450 incorporated towns in our state. Each year AIM has an annual conference with many workshops and classes over a 3-day period. I just realized last evening that I had a column due. So that is where I am right now writing the Chamber Chat from beautiful French Lick, Indiana.

The AIM conference is open to all city and town employees throughout our state. That includes any elected official such as mayors or council members, department heads and municipal employees. As most other events nationwide shut down last year our conference did as well. But the good news from last year was Plymouth’s own Street Department Superintendent Jim Marquardt was awarded the Ivan Brinegar Municipal Management Award. The sad part about it was done virtually from our virtual conference. Utilities Superintendent Donnie Davidson received the same award in 1999.

Below is a list of some of the workshops this year at the conference:

Successful Economic Development of Brownfields

The Future of Healthcare in Indiana

Risk Management

Keeping Up with Capital: Why We Need to to Plan COVID Lessons Learned for the Next Emergency Establishing a Fire Territory to meet Cross-organizational Needs

Municipal Jeopardy

As you can see those are some pretty dry subjects, but the panel discussions are always good and the speakers well prepared.

AIM leaders announced that there are over 1,000 participants at this years conference making it one of the largest ever and one of French Lick’s largest events as well.

Hope you have a great month!