The Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators held its September board meeting at Southport's Flightline Building yesterday.

It's one of four board meetings held each year.

Newly elected Board President Janice Baker, from Mississauga, Ontario, says they have roughly 600 members across the country, and the Association provides a variety of services to them.

"We plan an annual conference," she says, "Where we do professional development and networking. We assist our members with ongoing learning. We have a number of projects that we're doing, currently, around succession planning, and attracting the next generation of employees to local government."

Baker says a large part of their mandate is partnering with the Canadian Federation of Municipalities.

Janice Baker

"We would typically provide input and professional advice on a lot of these issues," she says, "So that they can help flesh out their perspective, and their advocacy to the federal government. Of course, our members are (from) small, medium, large municipalities, so we have a broad range of municipal perspectives that are represented at the Association."

Portage City Manager Jean-Marc Nadeau invited them to hold the September meeting here, and calls it an honour to host the Board.

"These are high achieving individuals who have reached a level in their organizations," he says, "And represent municipalities, that are exemplary to us smaller organizations, and we learn quite a bit from the networking that we establish at the CAMA Board. For example, the recent procurement policy that (Portage) Council reviewed this past week. Some of that we gleaned from other municipalities"