Sisters salutes...

• Nicole Montalvo wrote:

It's National Public Works Week and I just want to congratulate my public works coworkers. You may have seen them around town, the men and women of the public works department. Sisters is a small town, but the public works department takes care of "everything."

Take our beautiful city parks. We all enjoy them! They are completely maintained by public works staff, this includes the Village Green, Barclay Park, Cliff Clemens Park, Creekside City Park, and don't forget Sisters Overnight Park.

Public works staff makes daily water rounds, checking all the irrigation ditches, the treatment plant, the wells, etc. to safeguard our water supply. Public works staff reads the meters for water and sewer billing each month, and yes, when it seems your water bill suddenly is super high, they will come out to see if there is a leak somewhere.

Public works helps prepare for events that take place in town, like the annual Quilt Show, the rodeo parade, the Harvest Faire, the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony and the Christmas Parade to name a few. This doesn't just include processing the necessary paperwork, but it also means that they are moving picnic tables around, setting up cones and barricades or they are out there sweeping the streets.

And then when winter comes around, really early in the morning when you are still sleeping, or at least cuddled up in your nice warm bed, the men and women of the public works department are out there. They plow the new-fallen snow and de-ice the streets, so by the time you are out the door you can reach your destination as safely as possible.

Many people have wondered what this crew would be doing when they would no longer take care of the garbage collection in town. Well, they have taken on so many projects. They created a new and safer intersection at East Cascade and Larch. They worked on East Cascade, right in front of the elementary school, to make sure that those huge puddles that would form after heavy rain in the fall are a thing of the past.

The Sisters Overnight Park now boasts 25 full-hookup sites. The park has already seen a dramatic change in the number of guests now staying. Our camp hosts do an excellent job in running the campground and more. Elm Street received a makeover and public works staff worked on Larch Street as well. They worked hard to prepare the site for the wild stallion that Lorenzo Ghiglieri donated and helped install the statue and landscaped the area.

I am very proud to be a part of this team and would like to thank all for their hard work. They are awesome, and every one of them contributes by applying their own unique skills. The City of Sisters can be very proud of its public works department!

The City of Sisters Public Works Department: Brad Grimm, director; Paul Bertagna, project coordinator; Andy Duran, maintenance supervisor; Joe Davis, utility worker II; Josh Stotts, utility worker I; Conrad Kiefer, utility worker I; Doug McIntosh, utility worker I; Robin Bentz, utility worker I; Patty and Joe Werner, camp hosts at Sisters Overnight Park; and Nicole Montalvo, administrative assistant.

• Chuck Humphreys salutes Sisters Middle School and Commute Options (CO) for the two-week bicycle safety program held at the school last month:

We've been trying to organize this for several years. I think we have Kathy Miner at the middle school to thank for finally making it happen - for giving the message that bike education is important if we want more of our kids to get out of their parents' cars and bike to school themselves, for working with the teachers to free up time in their classroom schedules to allow it to happen, for making the kids and their parents feel it is a special opportunity. I think Kathy deserves special thanks.

Commute Options has a fantastic program of bike education for kids. For two weeks, trained CO volunteers came to Sisters - two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon - to conduct the classes. They brought bicycles and helmets for everyone. They taught the kids so much about

riding their bikes safely on the streets that in a few cases (like how to navigate four-way stop signs), the information will help them be better drivers too, when that time comes.

Among the many CO volunteers, I want to single out Sami Fournier for a special thank you - she organized the program, was the lead teacher, and invested her heart and soul in helping these kids learn to ride better.

Finally, we should thank the Sisters community. Sami, who has taught these courses in many places, told me what a delight it was to work in Sisters, where everyone was inevitably polite, where you could leave the bikes in the parking lot between classes and not worry about them being heisted, where so many residents volunteered to

help.