Mahoning County Forum
 A special thanks to Bob McCracken, Chairman, Goshen Township's Trustees, who hosted the Mahoning County Governmental Collaboration Forum on Thursday, September 30.  Bob worked extremely hard to make sure that schools, special districts and local governments from within the county attended.

Thanks to Bob's efforts, we had every one of these entity types attend representing 12 different organizations. There were many questions about how our programs work and how they could positively impact public sector entities. There were many public officials with many good ideas, and the realization that collaboration can truly be part of the solution to their current budget issues.

Canfield Local Schools Business Manager, Rich Archer, signed the affiliate agreement immediately after the forum and several others committed to bringing it up for vote at the next council meeting. As Bob McCracken put it in his opening remarks: "Sourcing Office and their programs are another valuable tool to have available."

The Sourcing Office staff was very please with the event. Executive Director, Bruce Tague stated: "Spending quality time with local governments to gather feedback and understanding the budgetary issues that they are facing, allows for a healthy debate and a collaborative approach to solving budgetary and operational needs. Not only are we finding that our programs can help with these issues, we are gathering much needed information to create and publicly procure new programs."