During the 2011 Nebraska Annual Planning and Zoning Conference the Distinguished Leadership Award for a Planning Advocate was renamed in honor of both Steve Charleston from Nebraska Department of Economic Development and David Ptak, Attorney at Law. The new name of the award is the Charleston-Ptak Distinguished Leadership Award for a Planning Advocate. The award is only renamed for the Nebraska Chapter recipients.

Both Steve and Dave have given a great deal of their personal time and money to insure that both citizen and professional planners are properly trained.

Steve has been involved in a number of activities that have assured that people in Nebraska have the proper planning education. He was a key individual that established a Technical Assistance Grant for the Nebraska Chapter of APA. This grant currently is up to $7,500 annually for training planning commissioners and citizens in Nebraska's planning requirements, laws and procedures. This grant allows the Nebraska Chapter of APA to bring quality speakers from across the United States annually as well as it provides scholarships for planning and zoning officials and other city/county members to attend the conference when budgets may not allow.

Steve was also key in establishing the Planning Grant funds within the Community Development Block Grant program. The funds distributed since the start of the program total several million.

Dave has been heavily involved in education, especially during the annual conference. He has been an active member of the conference for over 30 years, sometimes doing three to four legal session during the 2 1/2 day conference. In 1997, when county planning and zoning began to become popular, he worked to educate the existing 23 counties that had planning and zoning as well as the 70 counties that did not have any planning and zoning in place. Besides these activities, he has typically been willing to answer questions via email or phone call, usually at no cost to the community or county.

The Nebraska Chapter of APA is very proud to bestow this honor on both of these well deserving gentlemen.

Keith Marvin AICP

President, Nebraska Chapter of American Planning Association