News Release

For Immediate Release: June 21, 2006

Regional officials take leadership roles at national level

At the recent national conference in San Antonio of the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC), Betty Knight, presiding commissioner of Platte County and a member of MARC’s Board of Directors, was elected to the position of First Vice President/President Elect. This puts her in line to assume the presidency of the national organization in 2007­. Knight has served on the NARC Board since 2001.

Also at the meeting Ron Shaffer, mayor of Prairie Village, Kansas, became the Region XI representative on the NARC Board of Directors. Betty Knight previously held this board seat. As Chair of the Mid-America Regional Council Board of Directors, Shaffer was elected to replace Knight as Region XI representative. NARC Board members must be elected officials.

NARC also presented the prestigious Walter Scheiber Leadership Award to David A. Warm, MARC’s executive director. The award, given to one individual annually by NARC, recognizes the significant impact made by an executive director of a regional planning organization at the local, state, and national levels.

Since 1991, Warm has served as executive director of MARC, the association of city and county governments and the metropolitan planning organization for the bistate Kansas City region. Under Warm’s leadership, MARC has expanded its programs to better serve local governments and address timely regional issues. Among those are: administration of the Head Start program in Clay, Jackson and Platte counties; stormwater management; expanded 9-1-1 services; cooperative purchasing for cities and counties; the First Suburbs Coalition and the needs of inner-ring suburbs; housing choice; quality early learning; citizen engagement; and homeland security and emergency services.

This NARC leadership award is named after Walter Scheiber, former Executive Director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and a founder and the first president of NARC. Sheiber attended the meeting in San Antonio and made the presentation to Warm.

NARC is a nonprofit membership organization and public interest group whose mission is to build regional communities through regional collaboration. For over 40 years, NARC has represented the interests of its members through effective interaction and advocacy with Congress, federal officials and other related agencies. Its membership is comprised of local metropolitan planning organizations. NARC’s member organizations are composed of multiple local government units that work together to serve American communities — large and small, urban and rural. The Mid-American Regional Council (MARC), which serves as the council of governments and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Kansas City metropolitan area, is a member of NARC.

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