American Public Works Association

They'll be reaching out to DPS and other local youth groups to help pilot their concepts.

In recognition of their innovation and commitment, they have received grants and sponsorship from the American Public Works Association, as well as the North Carolina and Georgia APWA chapters.

They are now known as Team YL3C, which stands for Youth-Led, Centered, Created, and Communicated.

And they carry forward the mission to connect young people to meaningful careers that support our communities.

Um, and I was such an introvert.

Um, and slowly over the years, you know, with me, you know, taking part in APWA professional organizations, talking to folks, you know, um, now I've changed.

I'm, like, completely different to what I was, you know, nine years ago.

And I, I, I know Catherine can just speak to that, you know? I've changed over the years, and I think that soft skill development, um, over the years, uh, that's been a slow process in the making.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I know both of you guys are very involved in APWA, specifically in the YP committee.

Catherine, you were the past YP chair.

And what we do with our financial planning is we look at the health of our three utilities to ensure that we maintain a consistent level of service, not just today, but into the future.

And so we also participate in regional conversations, professional organizations, and our utilities have received some awards in some of the main organizations, national organizations, such as NAWQA, APWA, and AWA.

So within that context is we always continue to make sure that what we do in terms of financial health is not just what is happening in the next upcoming biennium, but also what is happening in the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years.

And that is the obligation that we have because behind the scenes is we want to maintain somewhat of a stable rate increases over the years, as opposed to put it ourselves, Five years down the road, if we don't do this financial analysis, all of a sudden we need to increase even higher than what we have.

It was just a, "I'm getting paid to do this." Um, so when I saw this other job opportunity, I took it.

Okay, so now this other job, this is interesting because I, I think as we're talking, uh, the APWA is having their annual conference down in Houston, uh, the big PWX, and this is w- is, is, uh, Public Works kind of unfolded to me 'cause I didn't know anything about public works, you know, years ago when I kinda dove into local gov, but then I started speaking at Public Works, you know, conferences, and it was l- and I thought it was, you know, oh, this is local gov.

But it's, it really is the, the dynamic, uh, department that has to span both private and public because public, uh, uh, local gov, especially many of these smaller cities, can't do these projects i- in really any city.

When you're doing these scope and size projects of massive infrastructure, you've got a whole, you've gotta bring in private, um, companies to be able to subsidize all that work and all that management.