Presidents Report on Visit to the Alberta Assessors Association Conference

AAOM President Erin Reid writes:

While the AAOM executive was busy planning and preparing for our upcoming 59^th annual conference (which will be held in Winnipeg on May 13^th and 14^th at the Best Western Plus Hotel), I attended the 55^th annual Alberta Assessors Association conference in Calgary Alberta on behalf of the AAOM. The conference ran from April 23^rd thru the 25^th and the theme was Sharing Solutions.

The conference began Wednesday night with a President’s dinner which was followed by an icebreaker reception. The icebreaker reception provided time to network and to meet or reconnect with acquaintances from all over the Province of Alberta.

Alberta has many assessment jurisdictions, unlike in Manitoba where we have just two. Assessors in Alberta may be municipal employees of a city, town or county, a provincial or federal government employee or a private contractor working with a private assessment firm.

The icebreaker on the 23^rd took place at the same time as what turned out to be the last Winnipeg Jet’s game of the season. I thought it was great that the Alberta association was streaming the game live on a big screen during the reception for all of us to keep track of the score!

Thursday April 24^th was a full day, beginning in the morning with the opening ceremonies. The opening ceremonies were opened with greetings from the current AAA president Collin Hindman, followed by, Brad Pickering the Deputy Minister for Alberta Municipal Affairs and City of Calgary City Assessor Nelson Karpa. After which I gave greetings on behalf of the AAOM along with other sister associations representatives, Sean Martin from the Institute of Municipal Assessors and Chandra McGuire from the Saskatchewan Assessment Appraisal Association.

Opening ceremonies and greetings were followed by the conference key note speaker, Spencer Beach of Spencer speaks. After suffering a terrible accident at work, Spencer has become a motivational speaker. After a quick refreshment break, the conference workshops began; there was a choice of four different sessions to attend.

I attended a session called “Time Adjustment 101: Why and How” the presentation was an introduction to using a time adjustment and was put on by staff from Alberta Municipal Affairs. Thursday afternoon the AGM took place, the AAA has over 600 members and this year was an election year, so it was a lengthy but informative AGM. The banquet dinner took place Thursday evening where dinner was followed by entertainment by the Karic Hendriks Band. The lead singer of the band is an assessor by day and performer by night.

On Friday the 25^th the conference workshops continued. The morning had 2 different session time slots in which you could choose to attend two of the four seminars offered. Seminars were offered on topics such as “Introduction to Farmland”, “Dealing with difficult People”, “Work Safe” and “Compliance Reviews.” I enjoyed my time at the Alberta conference and was as always treated kindly and with great hospitality.

Over the past two years during my term as president for the AAOM I have been able to attend many of our sister association conferences. While attending these conferences I have had the opportunity to network with many assessment professionals and have gained tremendously from these opportunities. I am truly grateful for the friends and learning opportunities I have gained along the way, and can say I was always proud to represent Manitoba and the AAOM at these events.