TSPS MAY 2025 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 8
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S LETTER
From your Executive Director
STRATEGIC
PLANNING 2026
have currently been traveling
to 昀椀nd our next destination
for Strategic Planning.
I am in negotiation with a
location in College Station regarding Strategic Planning 2026. This facility is very
beautiful and updated. There are a lot of
indoor spaces as well as outdoor spaces
that can be utilized for socials and meetings, team building exercises, the Ray Wisdom auction, and more.
It is laid out similarly to the Woodlands,
where the hotel is located next to a plaza
of restaurants and shopping centers. However, it is a fraction of the cost. Room rates
will be around $170 per night.
I
TRENA VANDERHOEVEN
Executive Director
TSPSYMPOSIUM 2025
This year we had 253 attendees! This is
quite a bit from our past registrations. Last
year we had 240, but this total includes
about 15-20 volunteers. We have now
bypassed student volunteers and have instead set a student registration prices for
our events at a signi昀椀cantly discounted
rate. We will continue with the student
registration for all future events. Financials are still being 昀椀nalized for Symposium, however, I believe we were right on
budget. We had overwhelmingly positive
reviews about this year’s Symposium. People always enjoy the Hot Topics session,
especially the attendees that are new to
surveying. Also, a lot of great feedback
@tsps.org
6 THE TEXAS SURVEYOR May 2025
@texassurveyors
about the Surveying the Wildcat session
with President-Elect Miguel Escobar, and
Valerie Zurcher. Overall, it was a successful
and seamless program. We do intend on
keeping the 1st quarter board meeting with
Symposium. However, next year the Symposium will take place in January instead
of February.
OFFICE UPDATES:
Last week we 昀椀nally installed a new HVAC
system in the of昀椀ce. At the last board meeting $40,000 was approved for this project.
However, we spent about $19,000! Special
thanks to our Past President Josh Leamons,
who researched and help us get a company to do an excellent job at a low price
and also assisted with the construction of
a new cabinet to host our HVAC unit.
By the end of this year I plan to end one
of our major contracts. We are currently in
a contract with Community Brands (Your
Membership) for our Association Management Software (AMS). This is the software
that members use to access their portals.
We also host our website on this software,
and send out emails. Community Brands
quite frankly is a waste of valuable money.
We pay about $5500 for this software, yet
we aren’t able to customize our website
(hence why it looks outdated comparatively), have a slim selection of email and
page design templates. We also experience
a lot of website outages and overall frus-
@texas-society-ofprofessional-surveyors
tsps.org
