President’s Corner

Welcome New Committee Chairs and Board Members

We continue to add leadership capacity to the board. I’m pleased to announce that the following people have been appointed to leadership positions on the APA WA Board: Continuing Education: Justin Patterson; Planning Official Development Officer: Erin Ishizaki, AICP, LEED AP ND; Emerging Professionals Committee: Sarah Butler and Will McPherson; Scholarship Committee co-chair: Steve Butler, FAICP; Climate and Sustainability co-chairs: Paula Reeves, AICP and Rishabh Ukil, AICP. Dr. Jason Scully has rotated into the Department Chair position at EWU and is now the EWU faculty representative on the Board. Lastly, Jovie Anderson has been selected as the student representative on the Board for WWU. Congratulations to the new board members and welcome!

2025 Conference Location Selected

The Executive Committee considered potential conference venue information compiled by the chapter’s consultant, HelmsBriscoe, and with input from the Conference Committee. At the May meeting, the Executive Committee reviewed a number of options and decided that the location for next year’s conference will be in Tacoma at the Hotel Murano, which has sufficient facilities to accommodate a conference of our size and which has a high probability of strong attendance to ensure that it is a financially successful event. Additionally, Tacoma is within an active Section and has not hosted since before the pandemic. The APA Office has secured this venue for October 8-10, 2025, and a host committee is already being formed. If interested in helping out with the conference next year, please send a note with your contact information to [email protected].

Check Your Membership Status

It was brought to the attention of the APA Office that a handful of APA WA memberships had lapsed without the members receiving a notice from national APA, and some members were apparently “dropped” from our member rolls in March. The Office is looking into this further, but in the meantime, all members should log into www.planning.org to verify that their membership has not lapsed. The APA WA chapter bylaws require that all board members must be members in good standing with members keeping their dues up-to-date.

See You in Bellevue!

This year’s annual conference October 16-18 in Bellevue is shaping up to be a “can’t miss” event. The Conference, Program, and Host Committees have been hard at work to ensure there will be dozens of interesting and thought-provoking sessions, networking opportunities, and keynote speakers from outside the profession who will help us to see the field of planning in new ways. I sincerely hope you will join me in Bellevue for what will no doubt be a memorable event!

President, APA WA