President's Message By William Dunn

Regional Member Network

I am inviting you to come out for the first regional membership meeting in your area.

During the month of February all authority staff will be invited to the first round of regional membership meetings.

AEA Directors in each region are planning a half-day session with speakers and lots of time for discussion and networking. You probably have already received your invitation and I hope your schedule will allow you to attend.

The directors and myself felt it was important to have the members get together frequently to discuss the operational and administrative challenges in the region. Often there are special concerns in a region that are best addressed by all the authorities in a united approach. AEA should be the vehicle to help make that happen.

As your president, I have had first-hand experience along the Delaware and in the Rancocas watershed. In both areas, authorities and municipalities in the region banned together to sample water bodies and to discuss the best way to reduce pollutant loadings. The collaborative approach helped each authority save money and time as we all pooled our expertise and experiences together. Establishing a cooperative network where we all knew each other opened the door for other collaborations on energy purchasing. All the authorities in the PSE&G service area challenged a rate hike and negotiated a lower rate for bulk energy. Together we all held our expenses down and served our customers better.

It is my hope that AEA member authorities and municipalities can maximize their membership relationships to do meaningful activities. I don't know what they are specifically. That is for you to decide. AEA is taking the first step in getting regional meetings going to open the dialogue.

If there are no big issues to tackle, there is always the everyday challenge of operating an authority. Managing employees, serving customers, constructing and improving facilities are always a challenge. We can all use new ideas and the only way to discover new ideas is to get out from behind your desk and talk to people.

AEA has established the Forward Thinking Award to showcase some of these ideas but often members are developing some good approaches to old problems and they don't submit them for an award. Hopefully, we will learn about these innovations from each other.

Our Spring and Annual meetings are great events for hearing new information and providing time for authority staff and commissioners to talk. Sometimes staff are busy providing hospitality to commissioners and do not have time to talk with other authority managers. The regional meetings will fill this gap in our communications.

Please attend and make the most of your best resource-other members.