The Board of Selectmen unanimously endorsed a new plan for maintaining town buildings that Town Administrator Tim Bragan presented this week. The plan would create a new position, but without adding an employee to the town payroll. In a separate but related discussion, the board also agreed to establish a building maintenance fund.
The proposed setup calls for a designated DPW employee, such as a truck driver or heavy equipment operator with the necessary skills, to do double duty, performing his current job and also acting as the town’s building maintenance coordinator and handyman, Bragan said. He estimated that in the beginning, the building maintenance job would take three-quarters of the new coordinator’s time.
The plan is the result of sit-downs Bragan had with Human Resources Director Marie Sobalvarro and DPW Director Rich Nota. Backed by Nota, the new position Bragan outlined would entail making the rounds and noting the condition of town buildings and listing trouble spots on a to-do list, building a database to track and prioritize items that need attention, and fixing those that can’t wait. The town would establish service contracts for plumbing, electrical, and major carpentry that the handyman can’t do.
Although the two-tiered job would include responding to on-demand requests, the snowplow would take precedence over the toolbox during the winter months, Bragan assured the board.
Decentralized, deferred maintenance
There’s been minimal attention paid to the upkeep of town buildings over the years, and issues have been handled in a “decentralized fashion” in which department heads were expected to sound the alarm when a building problem came up, Bragan explained. Often they had to fund the fix out of the department budget, he added, as the police chief did with circulator pumps in the Public Safety Building, rebuilding the failing system one component at a time.
Bragan cited other examples of “deferred maintenance” such as the antiquated heating system in the old library that has finally been replaced with a gas-fired system. Sometimes, a repair or replacement postponed too long has had disastrous consequences, he pointed out, such as the collapse of the DPW building roof seven years ago. “Resources were directed elsewhere,” Bragan said.
The most obvious example of long-deferred maintenance is Town Hall. But there are other buildings the town is responsible for, he pointed out, such as the new library, Hildreth House, and the refurbished Town Hall after its makeover is complete. It’s time to plot a proactive course to cover them all, Bragan said. The schools are not part of the plan, however, since the school department has its own facilities manager and building maintenance budget.
The current budget for town building maintenance, $22,000, is inadequate, Bragan continued. With that in mind, the selectmen agreed to establish a dedicated building maintenance fund, an idea suggested by Selectman Leo Blair, who proposed asking Town Meeting to approve a beginning balance of $75,000. That figure is only an estimate, Blair said, to ensure there’s some money set aside to fix things before situations become catastrophic.
The board agreed to send both proposals to the Finance Committee for review.
