By Terri Harber, The Roswell Daily Record — Roswell’s city government employees are approaching the end of another year of work. And they might end 2026 with fewer injuries than in each of the three most recent calendar years.
The number of employee injuries, as of Sept. 30, is 162. Going backward in time, there were 173 during the same nine months of 2025, 185 in 2024 and 290 in 2023. And the past full-year totals for city workers becoming hurt on the job, also in descending order, were 226 in 2025, 231 in 2024 and 357 in 2023.
Councilor Edward Heldenbrand chaired the city’s legal committee during the first part of these four years, and he is still a member of this council-level advisory group. This committee hears monthly reports about employee accidents as well as other human resource concerns, including how many job vacancies exist and how many people on staff were promoted or out on leave.
Heldenbrand said Shelly Bell, the city’s safety coordinator, and the city employees themselves are responsible for the number of work-related injuries going down throughout this time span.
With Bell providing more training to the workers and with them accepting that instruction, “the trend has headed in the correct direction,” he also said.
The September 2026 total of 23 incidents followed 28 this past August. September 2023 was the month in this nearly four-year period with the highest number of work injuries, when 44 employees were hurt.
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