LC Maintenance Ad Hoc Committee
Meeting: May 6, 2009, 8 AM, Lower Meeting Room, Town Hall South
Present: LC Members – Dan Amaral, Jan Brookes, Pat Llodra, John Torok
Ex Officio Members – LeReine Frampton, Robert Merola
Parks and Recreation Director – Amy Mangold; Parks and Recreation
Assistant Director of Parks – Carl Samuelson; Chairman of the Parks and
Recreation Commission – Ed Marks
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Amy Mangold said that P& R department employs 15 full-time, 6 seasonal park rangers, 53 part-time life guards and swim instructors, 16 part-time gate guards, and 49 camp counselors.
A partial list of the work responsibilities of full time P & R employees is:
The Director manages all P & R personnel and activities including those performing contractual services. She formulates and executes the program, and prepares and recommends an operating budget.
The Assistant Director of Recreation is responsible for all programming including the hiring and supervision of staff.
The Assistant Director of Parks is responsible for the management of park functions, the maintenance of parks, town and school fields and grounds, town grounds and park facilities.
The Field Operations Supervisor directs and participates in the maintenance of the fields.
The Parks Operation Supervisor directs and participates in the maintenance of the parks.
The seven Maintainers perform heavy manual labor using large equipment to maintain areas of P & R responsibilities and in the construction of new grounds features.
The Equipment Mechanic oversees a comprehensive preventative maintenance program.
One of the Maintainers is the Irrigation Technician who is responsible for the operation, programming and maintenance of the parks/fields irrigation systems.
In addition the department employs a secretary, part-time clerk and a part- time clerical aide to assist the Assistant Director of Parks.
Five employees have commercial driver’s licenses that license them to drive vehicles with trailers. Three maintainers have their pesticides license. One worker isn’t a licensed electrician, but can do electrical repairs under the direction of one of the BOE licensed electricians. One worker is working toward his irrigation license. The mechanic is ASC certified.
Carl Samuelson explained the following:
1. The performance of maintenance jobs is somewhat fluid in that all employees work together to get the job done.
2. The shift for maintenance workers is from 6 AM to 2:30 PM May through September, and 7 AM to 3 PM October through April. Spring and summer are earlier because parks must be cleaned before they are opened, and some school fields mowed before the start of the school day.
3. The work of seasonal staff begins in May. The most difficult time of the year to staff is the fall because P & R loses the Park Rangers who are college and high school students.
4. P & R budgets $50,000 for overtime plus $18,000 that is allocated for snow removal at BoE sites. Typically the department returns between $6,000 and $8,000 to the town at the end of each fiscal year. Overtime is $30 an hour for a minimum of two hours. Overtime has been reduced during the most active period of 39 weeks with the creation of an ‘on-call’ position. One worker is on-call, and can be accessed via the department cell phone during off-hours. This worker gets paid a stipend of $100 a week.
5. This year the P & R budget was reduced by 6 percent. This meant that the position of one retiring worker will not be filled. In addition, the request for an additional worker was denied. Currently, P & R maintenance will operate at a 60 to 65 hour deficiency of the current year. In addition, in a memo written by Mr. Samuelson to former P & R Director, Barbara Kasbarian, Mr. Samuelson explained that the number of hours his staff works is 370. However, from mid- March to the third week in November, there are 472.5 scheduled hours of work.
6. P & R maintenance is responsible for mowing, weed eating, garbage removal, and landscaping 25 separate fields and town buildings. Field maintenance includes grooming, lining and chalking, litter removal, rolling, base installation, backstop repair, edging, clay brick and infield repair, over-seeding, aerating, irrigation repair, and fertilization. Park maintenance includes tennis and basketball court repair, pool vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms twice a day, cleaning and repair of over 70 birdhouses at four locations, parking lot cleaning, and tick management. In addition, trails must be pruned, bridges repaired, the trail head graded
and plowed, cleaned after storm damage, and scouted for liability problems. P & R plows remove snow from the parking lots of all schools the parks, volunteer fire departments, trail heads, Edmund Town Hall and Town Hall South, Booth Library, Newtown Youth and Family Services, the Fairfield Hills campus including the Newtown Youth Academy, the dog pound and other buildings. All buildings at Dickenson and Treadwell Parks, the Teen Center and Eichler’s Cove are maintained by P & R staff.
7. Mowing of school properties and Fairfield Hills was contracted out to Prestige Landscaping through a bidding process held in March, 2009. In general, P & R shares mowing with Prestige. For example, Prestige mows the MS fields once per week, and P & R does those fields a second time each week. Mowing of other fields is arranged in the same sort of shared way. Prestige also has a contract with the town to mow the Fairfield Hills (FFH’s) campus.
8. This year P & R took on the job of emptying trash receptacles at FFHs, and has been asked to mow the lot adjacent to the ambulance garage.
9. Because of heavy park use from Memorial Day to Labor Day, projects are done before and after that time.
10. This is the second year the town has maintained Eichler’s Cove. The former owner still lives in a homestead at the cove rent-free, and is paid $40,000 a year to open and close the gates, do administrative work, keep an eye on things, and assign boat-slips. This arrangement may have to be reviewed. P and R has rebuilt the beach and the boat launch, and will soon install security cameras at the cove.
11. P& R maintenance works with BoE Maintenance and the Highway Department in a cooperative arrangement. One example is snow removal. The BOE custodians remove snow from sidewalks. P & R plows the parking lots. The highway department plows the roads. However, there are exceptions. P & R shovels walkways at Booth Library, the ambulance garage, and Newtown Youth and Family Services. All three maintenance departments provide backup for each other. If a Highway Department truck is down, P & R will help out. Highway Department trucks sand the parking lots at the end of a storm. Another example of
cooperation is when the Highway Department cuts down trees in parks and other town land. Function and equipment determine which department does what work.
12. Mr. Samuelson said that the BoE, P & R, and the Highway Department have an informal system of trading work. However, this system makes it hard to determine the real cost of work done cooperatively because all departments and so many people contribute to it. He feels that inter-department cooperation is working. When one department can’t help another department with the work until next month, they will contract it out, wait, or do it themselves.
John Torok suggested that larger projects should be tracked.
Pat Llodra added that tracking would not only clarify the real cost of work, but demonstrate the cost savings to the town.
Bob Merola said that it would be important to bring the story of cooperation and cost savings to light. He added that every collaborative effort should be documented.
Carl Samuelson stated that Scott Sharlow is looking for tracking software, but what he’s found to date only allows for tracking of costs between P & R and the Highway Department.
Amy Mangold said that the schools always have the first priority for using school facilities. However, typically P & R uses them evenings and weekends. Usually P & R doesn’t pay for custodians. Recently, P & R was told by the BOE that town agencies and departments may have to pay energy and custodial costs for school use. Newtown basketball already does pay for use of the schools on weekends. Access to the schools for P & R programs is made by each school’s principal. In the past, P & R had had poor access to the Reed School, but that situation has improved. P & R has good access to the high school, middle school, and elementary schools.
Ed Marks feels the superintendent of schools should make the decision about whether P & R can use school facilities. He added that Newtown Basketball pays for custodians on weekends. This causes some conflict because P & R feels that the custodians are there anyway doing regular BOE work. It’s more difficult getting access to the schools in the summer.
Pat Llodra stated that no one wants to put town maintenance departments in a tit-for-tat situation. The schools also take advantage of park facilities.
Carl Samuelson noted that while most purchases for supplies are different in each department, the BOE purchases toilet paper that P & R uses in the park bathrooms. If P & R use exceeds a given amount, they pay the BOE for the overage. P & R buys paint and fertilizer. P & R doesn’t usually use the state purchasing contracts as the prices aren’t very good, and P & R gets lower prices with regional purchasing consortia. However, there’s security in using the state contract because the companies are fully vetted by the state. Public Works does aggregate bidding and P & R buy of off of that. P & R and the BOE looked into purchasing chlorine in a bulk purchase. However, the schools have to buy chlorine in small packs because they don’t have
adequate storage.
Mr. Samuelson said that all projects in excess of $10,000 are put out to bid. Projects that are over $2,000 must have three quotes.
Mrs. Mangold, Mr. Samuelson, and Mr. Marks stressed the need for a town purchasing agent. Mrs. Mangold stated that Mr. Samuelson already does most of the P & R specs, and that it’s very time consuming and slows down the progress of P & R projects. Mr. Marks added that if a bid isn’t prepared correctly, it’s a liability for Mr. Samuelson.
Ed Marks said that if the town hired someone to write grants, every department would know if the project had priority to the town. The grant writer’s salary would be paid for out of the grant itself as the cost of administering it.
Ed Marks explained that the P & R budget for the 2009-10 year was reduced by 6%. A lot of that was taken out of capital. The selectmen’s explanation of the reduction was that P & R had returned money to the town in the last two years. He felt that such a system of budget allocation doesn’t reward departments for not spending all of their budget, and that P & R was penalized for saving. He was frustrated that the reward for managing well was further cuts in the budget. He further explained that some years money is returned to the town because all of the amount in large discretionary line items in the P& R budget, such as repair of vandalism, isn’t needed. Mr. Marks also felt that the salary of the top people in P & R isn’t competitive with that
of other towns. He believes that to keep P & R management, their pay will need to be increased, and those salary increases may have to be off-set by making difficult decisions such as closing Eichler’s Cove.
Carl Samuelson said that the cost of fertilizer will nearly double. To off-set those future costs, before the end of May he may have to purchase more fertilizer than he needs currently. However, fertilizer can be stored for future use.
Mr. Samuelson expressed his desire that before taxpayers accuse maintenance people of waste, they call his office and ask for the rest of the story so that a level of trust between the town and maintenance departments can be created.
Ed Marks commented that perception is reality. Town maintenance workers also have to be careful about how they conduct themselves in public.
Pat Llodra added that we have to operate in a culture of trust. The town is now bigger in population and more complex in operation and the services it provides than it was when she moved here. This makes the issue of trust between taxpayers and town employees more of a challenge.
Carl Samuelson said that because issues become so personalized, town employees are sometimes afraid to answer questions.
Jan Brookes for the committee
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