Look to the Future
Weekly update #257 12/22/2024 to 12/28/2024
Double days and business as usual are the norm the week between Christmas and New Year. Some of the highlights from the past week from around the best small town in America.
Regardless of how the holidays fall, we end up with several double days over a two week span. First, we had a double day on Monday where the Department of Public Works does two days worth of work on one business day, often with some overtime needed as well. After a couple days off with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they come back for another double day on Thursday to pick up Wednesday and Thursday’s routes. Next Thursday, they will do it all over again after New Year’s Day on Wednesday. Double days are the reason we moved Presidents Day and Columbus Day to floating holidays in 2025. Employees will not only have two less double days, but working those two days will give them an extra two days off to use when they choose over the course of the year. To everyone at DPW, thank you for all the extra effort at the end and beginning of each year.
On the thought of business as usual, I look to the Seymour Police and Fire Departments. Public safety doesn’t get holidays off like many jobs. Often the faces may shuffle around a little bit due to vacation days and trying to help a coworker get to be home on Christmas morning with little ones, but someone has to cover the shift. I hope all of our public safety team realize how much you are appreciated. Thank you for serving our community.
Flowing over to Water Pollution Control, you have a little more traditional work week, but it still requires some extra time to be put in for testing and on-call services in case of an emergency. With all the extra flow from people being at home and extra family visiting from out of town, the microscopic bugs at WPC get to work a little harder as the incoming waste is processed. Thank you to all our team at WPC for keeping the system up and running year after year.
Extra work or business as usual, I guess, is all in the task at hand. As we head into the last few days of 2024 I hope everyone is looking towards what can be accomplished in 2025. This week, I will leave you with the words of former UFC fighter Dan Miller, "Sorrow, anger and resentment look back, worry looks around, while faith, hope, and optimism look to the future."