President's Message

Lou Campanile, Jr. is the 2022 FSMS President.

April 2022

lou campanile headshot

Greetings from Washington, DC, where I recently attended the Spring NSPS meeting. I should be back in South Florida by now, but Mother Nature had plans otherwise as my flight this morning was canceled due to weather in Florida, so I’ll give it another try tomorrow (April 4).

There have been some recent changes in NSPS, most especially in the Executive Director position. Curt Sumner, the NSPS Executive Director for the past 23 years, has retired (he is now ED Emeritus), and Tim Burch from Illinois has been hired as the new Executive Director. Like Curt, Tim is a licensed Surveyor, and, in fact, he was the NSPS PresidentElect before he was hired for his new role (and he had to resign his position as President-Elect). Amanda Allred is now NSPS President (from New Mexico).

I attended more than a few Committee meetings while I was here, as well as the General Membership and Board of Directors meetings. I was impressed at the genuine desire of all in attendance to work towards the betterment of the profession, and I was able to interject the “Florida Perspective” in all of the meetings that I attended, and in all cases, it was warmly received.

Things have changed dramatically and for the better since I last attended the NSPS Spring meeting (2017). I really enjoyed this year’s meeting and have met a lot of new friends.

Like FSMS, NSPS has recently started a Workforce Development Committee and I can see that our committee can glean a lot of information from the NSPS Committee (Tim Murphy, Chair), and most likely, vice-versa.

Back to Florida, we were able to stave off another attack on Chapter 472, Florida Statutes thanks to our lobbyist David Daniel and our Legislative Committee, headed by Jack Breed. We will see another attempt to introduce lessened educational requirements for PSM licensure into Ch. 472 next year, and this will be the time for all of us to band together and stave off any and all legislative attempts to deregulate our profession, as this is truly what we are facing.

FSMS has a Board meeting coming up in Tallahassee on Friday, April 22. This will be our last Board meeting with Tom Steckler as our Executive Director. Tom’s employment contract terminates this month (yes, it has been 5 years already), and Tom has decided to retire. However, he has graciously agreed to continue serving as our ED until the close of our Annual Meeting in West Palm Beach (basically, July 23rd). At our February 4th Board of Directors’ meeting, the FSMS Board voted unanimously to appoint Rebecca Culverson as our Executive Director beginning at the close of this year’s Annual Meeting. 

The next time you talk to or see Rebecca, please congratulate her on her pending promotion. She has served us fantabulously, and it is time!