hello everyone thank you for tuning in to this episode of belmont in thirty i'm joanna jewel is senior multimedia journalist for wicked local belmont and the belmont citizen howell and i'm really pleased to have with me as today's guests art director jay came to us about two and a half years ago and you came from the city of everett over and at the city of everett you were in the same role correct director of city services for the city or well we're really glad you came here too i thought only good to have you on the show to talk about one of the town's major capital projects which there are currently no funds for a new public works facility i'm sure i'm sure you hear about this me a rundown as to what i was dealing with and the challenges that we're faced with the public works it's a ninety year old facility it's located at thirty seven c street and it's almost like a campus with multiple buildings not just one unfortunate thing was when they built it they built it too small so we cannot storage building too small is not good and we always want to build a little bit bigger you know i know you're new but do you know how long the town facilities department conducted a study to see if from town on buildings that needed to be upgraded if it was going to be more costly or cost effective or excuse me to the end of that study they determined that the building had several challenges with it the one of them was that it was that it should be consolidated all the satellite buildings throughout town should be consolidate so one central location right we have some ventilation and heating challenges we had some space issues with storage of vehicles we had some challenges with and turn it into a bathroom so that we could accommodate our female employee with the right of your right and there's no like established lockers for the for the cruise  were twenty four seven operation during emergencies or right any type of emergency that happens where you are twenty four seven therefore they determined that we didn't have adequate facilities for the crews to be able have like a resting area showers a kitchen area so they determined that the building needed to be built a new building a new building right and the estimated cost for that at the time back in two thousand and six was about twenty million dollars twenty million dollars but how many square feet did they i believe it was seventy seven thousand were seventy seven thousand square feet i think you tell familiar with the public works facility like what's there and i actually had the pleasure of touring it so we're going to and we will cut to that video and a moment but for people who aren't familiar how would you describe what is at a public works facility so we take care we maintain take care of all of the equipment in town the fire apparatus is the cruisers the public works crowded during the winter almost all of our equipment is diesel so it needs to if we don't have the ability to plug it in for the engine we need to bring it in too so the engines will freeze up and you also need good ventilation outward especially during the twenty four seven operations for snow the the there's no place for the crews to have any downtime and fortunately where they tend to congregate is in the area where all the vehicles are stored and sometimes a vehicle could be running the when the twenty foot bay door could be open and it's just not conducive for comfortable conditions right  that was done in one thousand and one along with some foreman room so they can work on responding back to residents and in a fashion that was more private they can go to a computer or whatever a kitchen was done and several other periods were done and right away you need a kitchen for a twenty four seven operation almost like the fire department has a full working kitchen storage right there's a lot of stored to but there you need a lot of storage but you don't have a lot of storage correct in the car and facility there is what you call a command center which is used during storms but that is really small it's only for like two people right but during a storm there's you said there could be up to twelve yeah and what happens in that room that room is where the operations manager the system director is basically coordinating with all the parking lots are cleared so there's a lot of moving parts and need to be coordinated in that room and every so often everybody comes and to have a basically a powwow as to what is going on in the way go back out into the workforce it is it's it's a lot of information moving very fast and it's it doesn't stop to the small stuff and i know another big part of what your department does is you handle those but you have the the water department and you also the waste management department right so so it's not just about snow removal ether cleanup equipment repair people need to know that d p w is like everything i mean if there wasn't a d p w in this town we'd be in big trouble and i think you're important for a lot of things year round it's not just the snow it's not just the leaf clean up there we were talking about  water main breaks you guys handle that flooding you want talk about little bit more old road repairs and a person with in every day public works such as some form or fashion someone's life rather than or when they brush your teeth or take a walk on the sidewalk or get in their trash picked up we are behind the scenes trying to make sure everyone's life is uninterrupted and able to go in the store or take a shower without any interruptions that is our goal and your response time is i think pretty quickly i know that if i call about a really bad pothole it gets fixed within twenty four hours and if i also call if i see unfortunately sometimes i see beer cans piled up in like a bush somewhere and i'll call and it does get taken away which we respond very quickly you know really great so i thought i thought it would be good i did have  a tour of the d p w facility recently of you and michael gave me a tour and i want to thank you for that and i did take a video which we are going to cut to now to give everybody an idea of what it's like out that was a really great tour and i want to just tell everyone if you didn't know that was michael santoro is the assistant director and also the director of the highway division and he's been with the public year that you started a lot of people may not know this was the year of one of the worst winters in belmont and probably massachusetts history two thousand and fifteen hundred and ten inches of snow hundred ten inches of snow do you remember how many how many hours it took to clean up all that snow that that way or that that that might be a tough question you know i think a lot would be understatement it was done in five weeks or how much sleep you got should we say we  it was five weeks of sunday monday a day off and then when i was strong on a wednesday and then a couple days off and i would start all over sunday monday and for five weeks into the pattern yeah it was unusual because it was just so much snow by the current state how did that add to the challenges during that particular winter and you know all the winters since but that particular one which could happen again absolutely i will have to say that great support great staff and great employees that they're totally dedicated to belmont and i honestly feel that in any storm or any of an emergency or not that were ready for many employees are there currently on the staff public works as a whole has fifty one employee was one of them is works for the parks department and she's the one that would be in the facility the other so there's three female employees two of them are in recreation one of them is in the park for me ok well and we talked a little bit about all the other things that your department deals with but i didn't mention the the trees because trees is another big thing that you deal with during storms whether it be wind winter storms or really bad rain storms  we have a contract with asp one we have a tree warden tom walsh and we are as retired or earlier with the seasons changing depends on what's going on spring is cleaning up in plant things and summer tends to have a few wind storms here and there but the the bulk of our work is in the worst time for snow and ice that particular storm and in two thousand and fifteen you you remember how many trees came down built some foremen offices off to the first day that you when you first come into the first twenty five day there's foreign offices in there and they separated the crow's nest i would say used to be to go up to rooms and they mean into one various things like that they did stuff in the machine shop for storage paintings you know that really is quite quite a while ago  tell our videos anything about these newer facilities and what they have that that belmont doesn't have this i've visited several facilities chelmsford lexington and they're all basically modern state of the art with the new america used to make operations easier more comfortable for the workers especially for twenty four hour operands the biggest thing though is probably the consolidation all departments on the one roof and it makes if you need to go to a emergency it's a lot easier to leave from one facility and have all your supplies and materials ready to go from the f facility instead of going here there are everywhere the takes time what are the bathroom facilities like in the new or in the new a bill in the newer i d p debbie of the like gymnasium type setting where you know have you don't have that now no we don't have that i have that also don't have showers that no point and we don't and you mentioned that's sewage is another thing that you deal with so it would be nice to have a shower like give me an example of so what would you say are the three things if there were three things you could fix and two thousand and eighteen what would what would be those three things one of them is actually being fixed this year it's the heating  ventilation part of the ventilation but the heating system is going to be upgraded this year and the facilities farmer is going to be managing that project and the other thing would be to upgrade  bathroom and rest area facilities and to accommodate you know everyone during twenty four hour operation and also would be nice to have like a proper like rest area a kitchen whatever yeah to be conducive to the you know time for our operation and you are familiar with the major capital projects working group and they will be presenting at the fall town meeting special town meeting and believe  are you familiar with any of the solutions they're talking about now and they're referring to as short term solutions since our i've been involved with the meetings that we've been having with a consultant and we have looked at a few conceptual designs happens soon and i do hope that a new d p w sillett is in the not too distant future or so i want i want to thank you for coming on the show one one one final question for jay i think we have a few minutes shows you can e mail me belmont at work at local dot com i also want think the belmont media center for making this all possible and you know one one last shout out and thank you to our d p w department for