APCO 2018 concluded with a look back and a look ahead as awards for individual service were delivered, the outgoing president discussed the association’s accomplishments and the incoming president laid out her plans for the year to come.

Outgoing APCO International President Martha Carter swore in APCO’s executive committee and its new Regional and Commercial Advisory Council Representatives. Carter moved to the post of Immediate Past President, Margie Moulin became Second Vice President, Tracey Hilburn became First Vice President and Holly Wayt assumed the presidency.

Don Miller and Kenneth Mann, both of the CPRA Chapter, were named life members for demonstrating “dedicated service and … major contributions to the association, and to the field of public safety communications.”

Carter named as the presidential award winner Dr. Steven M. Edwards, an adjunct professor teaching the capstone course of the APCO Certified Public Safety Executive Program (CPE) in Daytona Beach. “His students leave with new tools in their professional toolkit that will allow them to return to their agencies and immediately apply their leadership knowledge to their daily work,” Carter said.

Before Carter yielded the stage to the new president, she described her hopes for the association’s continuing progress.

“APCO continues to be an advocate for our public safety communications community and our members,” Carter said. “That advocacy may be in the form of fighting for deserved recognition of our public safety telecommunicators or lobbying Capitol Hill to seek adequate and sustainable funding to help our emergency communications centers transition to next generation technology, which will enable us to serve our citizens.”

Wayt, the new president, then explained her philosophy and vision for APCO’s course. She noted that technological change is a constant in the public safety communications business, but that is not the most important element.

“It is the people sitting in this room, and those serving in our communications center across this nation that are the heart of our profession. They must have a voice in the direction of our future,” Wayt said.

She said teamwork and expanding the lessons learned from tragic incidents would be her priority in the coming year.

“Several of the circumstances that were encountered could have been sidestepped, to a certain extent, if ‘lessons learned’ information had been shared ahead of time,” Wayt said. “APCO will be establishing a new task force whose sole purpose will be to create a document that is a compilation of post-incident information; a ‘how to’ reference guide for unusual circumstances that are encountered during these types of tragedies”

She said the document will cover situations during deaths in the line of duty from a communications perspective.

“It is our intention to have the document included within the ProCHRT tool box for all to access,” she said.

Wayt said she intends to keep lines of communication between members and the association leadership to hear ideas for improvement.

“It continues to be your work, your voice, your opinions and your passion that will carry this association successfully forward into the future,” she said.

The conference concluded with a routine by Louie Anderson, a situation comedy and stand-up comedian who made his network television debut in 1984 on the Tonight Show.