A perfect storm of issues came together this summer that caused the Department of Public Works to fall behind with groundskeeping in town, including on the athletic fields.
With fall sports about to start, the Parks and Recreation Commission stepped up to hire two landscaping contractors to mow and weed-whack the fields. With some additional help from DPW workers, the work is nearly done, and the fields should be ready for play sometime this week. But questions persist about whether the current field maintenance arrangement between Parks and Rec and the DPW remains viable.
Parks and Rec is in charge of all athletic fields except Pond Road field, the Bromfield School field, and the field next to it in front of the library—responsibility for those fields lies with the school. But the DPW is required to provide labor for maintaining all the fields, including mowing, weed-whacking, painting the lines, and infield maintenance, which involves driving a tractor with a special attachment over the infields to remove weeds. This summer, DPW’s groundskeeping efforts were thwarted by a variety of problems.
DPW Director Tim Kilhart told the Press that rain was probably the biggest contributor to this season’s issues. He said rain nearly every day in July not only prevented mowing and weed-whacking, but caused the grass and weeds to grow even faster. Add that to the time it normally takes for fields to dry out, and it was impossible to keep up, he said. According to the National Weather Service website, it rained 20 of the 31 days in July.
Some of the dry days fell on weekends, and the crew couldn’t work overtime on weekends without approval. Kilhart said he needs to get authorization for overtime from the town these days because of the ongoing coliform problem with one of the Pond Road wells, and he has not received approval for any groundskeeping overtime this summer. According to Town Administrator Tim Bragan, chlorinating the well daily requires eight hours of overtime per week, so funds from the DPW’s limited overtime budget are being spent quickly. Bragan said, “I am not saying it is not important, just placing it in the perspective of everything else that is happening.”
Understaffed, untrained
To make matters worse, Kilhart said, the DPW has not had a full staff this summer. Normally he has a crew of 11, including three people trained for groundskeeping, but he is down to 10 with only two groundskeepers. He said a new person was trained on one of the large mowers, but as soon as he received training he left to go to another town that offered higher pay. Only the lead groundskeeper, Ben Gilbert, is trained to run the tractor that weeds the infields, the one remaining task.
The DPW workers’ contract is currently under negotiation (see story, page 1), and one of the sticking points is low starting salaries. According to Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro, low salaries contributed to the loss of five of the eight workers who left the DPW in the past 12 months. That doesn’t bode well for the DPW’s ability to keep up with parks and field maintenance in the future. Kilhart told the Press, “I have a boatload of applications from people who said they’re not interested because we don’t pay enough.” He said more than half the department has been there less than a year, and every time someone new joins the crew, other workers must spend time training them.
Faced with fields in unplayable condition, Parks and Rec Chair Bob O’Shea told his colleagues on the commission at their Aug. 23 meeting that he and member Keith Bilafer had hired two contractors, Chestnut Tree and Landscape and Three Seasons Landscape, to mow and weed-whack the fields that Parks and Rec is responsible for. He said he was able to hire the companies without going through the procurement process because the cost would be less than $10,000, and the commission has funds to pay the bill.
But the commissioners agreed that labor is the DPW’s responsibility as negotiated at the beginning of the fiscal year, and they intend to seek reimbursement from the town to pay the contractors. The DPW does not have a groundskeeping labor line item in the budget; it is paid for by a portion of the salary of three workers, although this year there are only two. It is unclear what the process for recovering budgeted money for a worker that was never hired or that left before the fiscal year ended might be.
Both O’Shea and DPW workers told the Press they feel they are taking a lot of heat for the condition of the fields this summer, and much of it is out of their control, especially for Parks and Rec, which is at the mercy of the DPW for labor. Kilhart told the Press he couldn’t fix the problem by hiring private contractors because he’s not authorized to do so.
“I’m not happy with the fields. My groundskeeper’s not happy. We’re doing what we can. People aren’t knocking on our door to work here,” Kilhart said. Bragan told the Press, “I truly wish this season was different and that the weather, equipment, staffing, and everything else had fallen into place to allow Ben and his crew to do the good job they do.”
