Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Governance customer service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Governance customer service. Show all posts

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp July 26, 2008 By TINA KELLEY for the New York Times

Whether or not you are involved in the customer service business – working for the public in the private or public sector, you will understand this piece all too well: Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp July 26, 2008 By TINA KELLEY for the New York Times.
July 26, 2008 By TINA KELLEY

HONESDALE, Pa. — A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall.

Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know — preferably today — which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. All before lunch.

Answering these and other urgent queries was Karin Miller, 43, a stay-at-home mother during the school year with a doctorate in psychology, who is redefining the role of camp counselor. She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call.”

Jill Tipograph, a camp consultant, said most high-end sleep-away camps in the Northeast now employ full-time parent liaisons like Ms. Miller, who earns $6,000 plus a waiver of the camp’s $10,000 tuition for each of her two daughters. Ms. Tipograph describes the job as “almost like a hotel concierge listening to a client’s needs.”

The liaisons are emblematic of what sleep-away camp experts say is an increasing emphasis on catering to increasingly high-maintenance parents, including those who make unsolicited bunk placement requests, flagrantly flout a camp’s ban on cellphones and junk food, and consider summer an ideal time to give their offspring a secret vacation from
Ritalin.

One camp psychologist said she used to spend half her time on parental issues; now it’s 80 percent. Dan Kagan, co-director of Bryn Mawr, has started visiting every new family’s home in the spring and calling those parents on the first or second day of camp to reassure them.

[…]

Read the rest here:
Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp

Saturday, December 08, 2007

20071130 City municipal offices relocate by Ryan Marshall

20071130 City municipal offices relocate by Ryan Marshall

Carroll County News Briefs for Friday, November 30, 2007

Carroll County Times: City municipal offices relocate

Thursday was moving day for some of Westminster’s municipal offices.

The city’s public works departments, planning staff and the office of the city administrator have moved from City Hall to 56 W. Main St., where the economic development and finance offices are already located.

The housing and human resources departments will move from that building to City Hall.

The shuffling was meant to get the city’s administrative offices together at the Main Street building, Mayor Thomas Ferguson said.

— Ryan Marshall

20071130 City municipal offices relocate by Ryan Marshall