In early April, four members of the City of Martinsville’s administrative staff attended the National Forum for Black Public Administrators’ (NFBPA) annual conference in San Francisco.
The attendees were City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides, Assistant to the City Manager and Deputy City Clerk Peyton Niblett, Management Analyst Sita Conde, and Community Engagement Specialist and Executive Assistant to the City Manager Shasta Carmichael.
Ferrell-Benavides noted that both Niblett and Conde also completed the NFBPA’s one-year mentor program for aspiring administrators. Niblett served as the keynote speaker at the conference. Ferrell-Benavides is a former national president of the NFBPA.
The conference was held Wednesday, April 9, through Sunday, April 13.
At the April 22 Martinsville City Council meeting, Ferrell-Benavides congratulated Niblett and Conde for completing the mentor program.
“What was the biggest honor for me is that Peyton was selected as his class’s keynote speaker,” she said at the meeting. “As he spoke from the podium, you could tell everyone was totally impressed and mesmerized.”
She added that the mentor program participants completed a team project that involved developing a strategic plan for a city. Niblett’s team focused on Marlboro, North Carolina, and Conde’s team focused on Gilbert, Arizona.
“What I can tell you, council, from those presentations and from the work that they’ve done—we’ve got some great concepts and ideas that I think we’ll be able to implement here,” she said. “So, I’m quite proud of all of our team and all of the hard work that has gone into all the actions you see.”
When contacted by this newspaper for additional information and to highlight Niblett’s success during an April 25 interview, Ferrell-Benavides said the city paid for the conference because it was a professional training program for government employees.
More than 1,000 people attended the conference.
“Just like we train people for other stuff, we’ve got to train them for government,” she said. “We have a very young staff. You’ve had massive resignations, and you’re trying to train people to be in government who have not necessarily served in government before.”
She explained that NFBPA helps prepare individuals for careers in public service.
“It was established in 1983 with the goal of grooming future public administrators—government employees—for careers in local government. The organization has been meeting for over 40 years,” she said.
Ferrell-Benavides emphasized that the NFBPA serves individuals of all racial backgrounds.
“I graduated from the mentor program,” she said. “We had an Executive Leadership Institute that used to take you to multiple organizations. It is very similar to the University of Virginia (UVA) SEI (Senior Executive Institute) program or the LEAD (Leading, Educating, and Developing) program, but it costs a lot less than each of them.”
She said she did not know the specific cost of the San Francisco trip, but added that it was comparable to other city-funded training trips.
Ferrell-Benavides said she doesn’t know how many training trips or conferences city staff attended out of state in April, as there isn’t a designated employee who tracks all travel.
“I know my police chief just told me he was in Dallas just now, so I don’t know,” she said. “Some people, I see their travel forms and I know where they’re going. But I will tell you that the city and people go all over the country all the time for training wherever it’s available.”
She noted that even the National League of Cities conference is held in Washington, D.C., which is technically out of state.
“From my observations, Martinsville has someone — whether it’s a constitutional officer or a regular employee — somewhere two or three times a month doing some type of training,” she said.
The city covers training costs for all departments. Each department has a line item in the annual budget for travel and training.
“For example, we sent council to new council orientation and training because they need to know how to be a council member,” she said.
Some trainings are required by professional certifications. Ferrell-Benavides cited CPAs needing to attend Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) trainings, and police officers needing certification.
“So, training is a necessary part of keeping an organization running,” she said.
According to Ferrell-Benavides, the Neighborhood Services Department has a training and travel budget of $7,000, and the police department’s is $75,000.
“Their actuals for ’22 were $70,000. For ’22–’23, it was $71,000. The year before that, it was $61,000. And it’s in the budget book online,” she said.
She said the fire department’s travel and training budget is typically between $8,000 and $9,000. While the department does a lot of in-house training, some travel is still required.
“It’s a very big part of what we do, but it’s also required,” she said. “Just like our EMTs—if you didn’t send them to training and they did something wrong, we could get sued. Same thing with our accountants. Our county policy changed, we need to send our finance people right now to MUNIS (accounting system) training because none of them know anything about MUNIS.
“We’ve got a lot of people who have taken on jobs and are going to have to be groomed and taught how to do their jobs because they just don’t know. That’s why we do these. Some are in-state, some are out-of-state, but we encourage professional development in this city—and I stand by it completely.”
