Open house highlights Moose Jaw's public works employees

The City of Moose Jaw welcomed about 250 students to the City Complex Wednesday for an open house to celebrate National Public Works Week. Schools represented included Lindale, Empire, St. Michael, Sacred Heart, and St. Agnes.

Nearly 30 individuals from Diversified Services also attended the event, which featured equipment displays, games, and information booths.

"It's just a community event that we want to let the public know what it is that we do and how important public works is to our community. As well, it gives employees the chance to actually talk about what they do and take pride in what they do," explained Staci Dobrescu, Utilities Supervisor for Water and Wastewater.

Some of the areas represented were parks, sewer, safety, information desk, and garbage and recycling.

Students had the opportunity to decorate a set of grader blades, which will be used later this year during the first snowfall

High school students interested in a career in public works also had the opportunity to attend during an early morning session. Additional employees from city hall were brought in to chat with the high school students.

"We have staff that have started inside city hall that have post-secondary [Education] from Sask Polytech that have actually come out and are now working for me doing a completely different career that they originally thought they were starting with," explained Dobrescu. "We also have it working the other way. We have career coaching. We have some higher leadership staff that are part of the career coaching and if our staff want to join career coaching, then they are paired up with somebody and they're encouraged to move through the ranks and get education to move somewhere else."

The theme of this year's public works open house was Connecting The World.

"Every year it gets a little bit bigger," added Dobrescu. "This year we added in the education session into the high schools. Next year we're actually going to be adding an education session into middle school years."

She says next year they plan to include representation from additional departments such as information technology and engineering.