Parker to host Touch-A-Truck event ahead of Public Works Week

Parker residents will get a chance to climb around the trucks and machines that keep streets open, signals working and drainage moving when the town hosts Touch-A-Truck at the Parker Farmers Market in O’Brien Park. The showcase is set for Sunday, May 17, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the O’Brien Park parking lot at 10795 Victorian Dr., and town staff from the Engineering and Public Works Department will be there to explain how the equipment is used and why the work matters.

The timing is no accident. National Public Works Week runs May 17 through May 23, and the American Public Works Association’s 2026 theme is “Rooted in Service, Powered by Community.” Parker is using the week to put a visible face on a department that handles the less visible work of keeping a fast-growing town functioning day after day.

That includes capital improvements and construction services, engineering development services, facilities services, fleet services, the stormwater utility, streets maintenance and traffic services. In practice, that means the crews people notice only when a road is patched, a sign is fixed, snow needs clearing or a drainage problem has to be addressed before it becomes bigger.

The town’s spring and summer events calendar lists Public Works Touch-a-Truck as a free 2026 community event, and the location puts it alongside one of Parker’s busiest weekend gatherings. The Parker Farmers Market runs Sundays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Mainstreet in Old Town Parker and draws more than 70 vendors, which should give the public works display a ready-made audience of shoppers and families already out for the market.

For Parker, the event is as much about civic education as it is about equipment. A bucket truck, utility vehicle or street-maintenance machine can be easy to overlook when it is on a work site, but Touch-A-Truck puts those tools in front of residents and shows the people behind them. It is a reminder that the roads, sidewalks, traffic signals and stormwater systems most people depend on every day are the product of steady, routine work that usually happens before a problem reaches the curb.