The sixth annual Perry Safety and Employee Appreciation Day is tomorrow, and City employees are invited to a midday filled with both information and thanks.

Deputy Public Works Director Josh Wuebker is once again helming the event, which he says came about following the City employees making a concerted effort to cut back on workplace injuries. Wuebker explains, about a decade ago Perry was faced with the prospect of having to find their own workman’s compensation insurance due to a large number of claims every year. With that eventuality looming, the City formed a safety committee and the employees all bought in on being more safety-conscious on the job. Since then the City has reversed that trend and have nearly half of the workplace injuries they had been seeing.

Wuebker says tomorrow’s event will celebrate all that hard work. “The City, we’ve made different changes and stuff, so it is the employees that have done a good job of doing that. And this is one way of rewarding them and saying, ‘Hey thanks for being safe.’ And the appreciation thing is nice too, just for you know thanks for everything we do. This is a great organization to work for, we do have the best employees. We couldn’t be more happy and think of a better way to thank them. So it’s a good event, I think employees like attending it. It really is educational, you know the different workshops and stuff that we do. So yeah, (we’re) pretty excited for it!”

The Safety and Employee Appreciation Day will be held tomorrow from 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. in the sally port at the Public Safety Building. City employees are reminded to let their department head know if they plan on attending. Lunch will be served courtesy of El Tren, and attendees can also get their yearly flu shot.