WSA Member Update 10.15.23

October 15, 2023  Dear WSA Members,  I’m sending this out today since the 15th is on Sunday. If you’ll be sweeping on Halloween be sure to have a safety meeting with your crew to emphasize caution on that afternoon and evening!  We welcome our newest member, Cleaner Streets, LLC, which does business in California and Arizona.  WSA has added an exciting new membership benefit! Starting immediately, member businesses may sign their employees up, at a discounted rate, to a very comprehensive, on-demand, virtual healthcare program from the Telwell organization.  To learn about all the benefits we arranged a Zoomcast with Telwell’s Rico Tucker, who has now become WSA members’ contact for the program. Also on that question-and-answer session was Phil Duncan, principal with WSA’s endorsed insurance agency, BindDesk, and Lori Stauty, a principal with WSA Advisory Board member Commercial Power Sweeping.  The basics: For only $250/year ($21/month) one of your employees and their entire family receive unlimited access to their standard and urgent care medical issues from board certified physicians via a phone or video link. The doctors can then prescribe whatever medications are indicated and send them to the patient’s preferred pharmacy through an included discount program.  WalMart recently shared in a blog post that during a pilot run of the virtual primary care service it recently put into place it had charted an 11% decrease in the overall healthcare costs for its employees and their families.  As Phil Duncan commented, “This is a great way to eliminate L&I claims from uninsured employees on issues that didn’t actually take place at work.” And Lori, who handles benefits for her company, commented that she thought Telwell would reduce employee sick days both for themselves and when they have to take care of sick kids, among other benefits to the company.  Whether or not you currently provide health care benefits to yourself and your employees we strongly encourage you to take a serious look at the benefits the Telwell urgent care system will provide at the low pricing WSA negotiated.  Roger Sutherland and I received very positive feedback on the webinar we did for Storm Water Awareness Week, Street Sweeping: America’s Proven First Line of Defense for Storm Water Runoff. We were also able to provide archive access the webinar so it could be viewed on-demand. You’ll find that linked on the WorldSweeper website at this URL.  If you run a street sweeping program, have street sweeping clients or are trying to get started in municipal sweeping you will definitely want to learn all the new information presented in the webinar.  The FREE webinar being hosted by Heavy Duty Trucking on October 19th is entitled: “VMRS – The Best Kept Secret in Fleet Maintenance.” VMRS stands for “Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards.”  Here’s part of what the signup page says: “VMRS coding gives fleet operators, fleet managers and technicians a standard language for assets, parts labor, maintenance, work orders, and scheduling. When asked where your time was spent, the reason for repairs, and where you’re spending the most, VMRS can help take the pain of exports and spreadsheets away and replace it with detailed cost summary reports that can be accessed with the click of a mouse.”  For each of our mid-month issues – when I am tasked with finding a previous one to provide – I have pangs of sadness due to the passing of our long-time Safety Meetings provider, John Meola. This month, our Safety First! post is reprised from Meola’s still valid message of October 2017. October’s Safety First! message discusses the following:Deer Season RemindersGlare Hazard TipsTrick-or-Treat; Be Alert!Cooling Temps = Body ChangesDefensive PositioningErgonomicsIf you have questions or comments about this WSA Member Update, or anything else to do with the World Sweeping Association or power sweeping in general, please let me know.  Good Sweeping,  Ranger Kidwell-Ross, Executive Director World Sweeping Association