President's Corner

The fall season is upon us and many things have happened since we last met. It is truly an exciting and challenging time for us as individuals and especially as facility managers. The road ahead should be viewed positively as an opportunity for creativity that makes your leadership abilities shine to all in your community.

The State of Florida’s recently passed tax reform legislation has affected many of our venues and the municipalities that own them with belt tightening measures reaching in every direction. It will affect some facilities through loss of staff, hiring freezes, no new capital expenditures, and no increase in services. The entire industry in our State will also be affected due to government agencies and associations to which government
employees belong cutting travel budgets that decrease attendees at meetings and conventions in our market place. Local economies may also be hit due to the lack of new capital products stopping economic development in your communities.

These changing times call for each of us to seek new ways to develop revenue sources for our industry to keep us financially solvent both in our buildings and in our association. I would like to challenge each of you to be inventive and share your ideas through the association to all of our members as I know we can all benefit from each other’s knowledge. My facility, the Ocean Center, continues with its expansion growth and is changing rapidly on a daily basis. It is on track for opening in the late
fall of next year and each of you will be invited to the “Grand Opening”, and if you miss the opening hopefully I will be showing off the new building at our annual meeting in ’09. I will announce additional information as the time draws closer.

I had the great pleasure on Thursday, September 6, of welcoming everyone to this year’s operational seminar at the Lakeland Center. Wow! If you were not there you really missed an exciting day with all of the folks in Lakeland and with some outstanding operational staff members from across our State. The entire event was A+ from checking into the hotel to the closing reception with a surprise finale. I got to also renew a friendship after introducing him as our welcoming speaker, Tony Delgado the Deputy City Manager for the City of Lakeland. Tony and I used to be at various tradeshows and conferences together selling our respective facilities and we had the opportunity to talk about “the good ole days”… that happens as we mature! Any way it was a great day and extremely enjoyable.

I want to express my sincere appreciation on behalf of the Association to Mike LaPan and all of his staff for producing an extraordinary event. The attendees were all impressed with the seminar and gained a great deal of knowledge they will keep for years to come. The presenters were all very informative and kept their audience’s attention at all times and from the cheers and applause I heard coming from our Vice President’s session, Mickey Farrell needs to go on tour…I am not sure what he told them but they loved him. In addition to Mike and his staff, I would be remiss if I did not mention Aramark’s management, and food service staffs as all the meals were superb from the taste to the presentation. By the way, if you like chocolate the lunch desserts were heavenly! The event ended with a question and answer session followed by a closing reception with Aramark doing a great encore and then Mike’s surprise finale of ice skating for all interested. I had to leave but feel sure there were some Olympic hopefuls on the ice. Mike and staff once again set the bar high for future seminars.
Wishing each of you has a wonderful fall and winter season!

Rick Hamilton,
FFMA President and Director,
Ocean Center