Apartment Trends Magazine June 2019 | Page 8

FROM THE PRESIDENT MIKE HOLT | LEGACY PARTNERS It's a wrap on my busy year as AAMD president W ith the arrival of June each year, I find myself looking forward to the start of many wonderful things. Things like Father's Day, the start of summer and it’s long evenings, my birthday, warmer weather, vacations and the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors. This year, however, June marks the end of something, my term as AAMD president. I pause to reflect on the past 12-months and hold my breath. What have we achieved? Did we leave a mark? Did we set the stage to create future leaders and a strengthen the association? I’m proud to say we did. We really did, and on so many levels. During my installation I challenged my fellow volunteers to reengaged, participate, educate and push the association to new levels of success. I asked for more classes, more leaders, more Ambassador’s to spread the word and more recognition for the many great things our membership and Association do for our community. You pushed our event attendance up 8.7% over the 3 year average, nearly 1,000 more people attended AAMD events. Our Committees added new events like Lease-A-Rama and Charity Bowling to an already amazing line up including Conferences like Economic Conference, Business to Business, Chili Cookoff, and TechCon to name a few. Maintenance Olympics alone saw an increase of over 500 people this year. Tributes amazed over 1,300 people and won an Excellence Award from the National Apartment Association. Education participation rose 29% with 1,630 students participating in numerous classes taught by countless amazing membership volunteers. Our MAP (Maintenance 6 | TRENDS JUNE 2019 Apprenticeship Program) continues to create opportunities and careers for future maintenance personnel. To date over 130 individuals have participated with an outstanding 89% graduation rate. We look to the future with the creation of property management courses with Arapahoe Community College and Maintenance classes taught at the association office in the new office expansion called HOME Room (Hands on Maintenance Education) . Over 20 new Ambassadors were added to an already small army and visited more communities than ever before and created stronger engagement with our onsite teams. We created Apartments Giving Back to showcase all the charitable contributions our management and supplier companies do for the community and added Phil, our Philanthropic Bear as a mascot. We continue to donate time and resources in support of Family Homestead, and are supporting and pushing LIVE Denver, an initiative to help with the affordable housing crisis. We rolled out Housing4Colorado. org, a website to assist with education for renters, the community, and provide a resource for all on housing solutions. On the political front, we created additional committees to educate the public and our elected officials on housing needs and when necessary to combat bad legislature on behalf of the state and its residents. As my term slowly winds down I take pride in what our Association has accomplished and in what you as an association have achieved. After a brief pause to reflect, I exhale and look forward with pleasure to June and the year to come. www.aamdhq.org