This week at the Town...

Here at the Town of Marana, the wellness of the employees is greatly considered by the organization. In addition to having a gym on-site (complete with locker rooms), workshops are conducted to teach employees about nutrition, fitness, and their overall well being.

I attended a meeting this morning discussing future workshops and improvements in the gym, which included looking into an annual maintenance contract and setting up a board for employees to read about news and tips on their fitness. I really like that the Town of Marana offers this perk to their employees. It makes me feel like the organization I work for cares about me beyond what I do. In return, being in better health helps  productivity. I think it's a win-win situation, and I hope more organizations will start implementing this kind of program.

This week I attended a workshop on reducing stress, and learned about behaviors I could adapt, such as reducing caffeine, sleeping more, and working out. There was a fairly good turnout of employees at the workshop, which showed me that people wanted to learn and benefit from what these workshops offered.

In other news, I've continued looking through old photos from Marana's past and creating an outline for the Marana heritage book I'm working on. It's a tricky project, because not all photos are in one place, and some of the older images are held by various organizations such as the Arizona Historical Society. What I do have, however, is some great photos from the past 10 years showcasing citizen involvement and events.

I'm finalizing my draft for the Emergency Support Function of public information in Marana. It outlines the responsibilities of the public information officer, as well as describes the support functions of that area for preparation, response, recovery, and mitigation. It also explores the assumptions behind what can happen during an emergency, such as knowing the wide variety of possible occurances, understanding that despite a warning being issued it might not be heeded by parts of the population, and stresses the importance of timely responses to reduce injuries or damaged properties.

 Another project I've been working on for the past month with Community Development is compiling surveys from colonia residents in order to get them re-designated as colonias and get funding to help improve their neighborhoods. After slowly trickling in, we have enough surveys to begin the application process. 

In addition to these projects, I'm still finalizing plans for the Marana booth at the League of Cities and Towns event that will be happening at the end of this month. I'm going through photos taken from Amanda and my drive around town a few weeks ago, hoping to pick out some images that will work well in our photo collage. That will definitely be an interesting day, I look forward to it.