We were just notified by the Association of Washington Cities that we have earned the WellCity designation again for the 6th year in a row.  Why is this important?  For one thing, it saves you money! But it also helps provide better services to every citizen.

Like any business in the City, our employees are our greatest asset.  They come to work each day, sometimes each night, to provide us needed and valued services.  These can be really stressful jobs, providing services that don’t always keep bank hours.  On a given day, a City employee might have to deal with high voltage electricity, toxic substances, runaway goats, lawsuits, Federal reporting forms that would make your head spin, floods, plugged sewers and angry people (not necessarily all at the same time). Even more that helping maintain our quality of life in Sumner, some of our City employees have to handle life and death situations, quite literally.

What do you do with all the stress in your job?  As we all know, stress can affect our health, and medical bills can be a huge impact to any business.  It’s to our benefit that our employees not only keep trained and up-to-date with changing requirements and best practices, but also that they take care of themselves and their families.  By earning a WellCity Award, the employees are consciously taking care of their physical, social, spiritual and intellectual well-being.  Not only does that immediately reduce the cost of health care through the Association of Washington Cities by about $20,000 per year, but it also means our employees are healthier in general, which makes them better able to take care of all of us.  It really is a win – win: good for our employees and good for us.  That makes all of us feel a bit better too!

A big thanks to the City Wellness Committee, led by Noel Clark, and all the employees who paid attention to their health and helped reduce our City’s health care costs this year.