State of the Town Services
Published: 3/11/2005
In the second installment of my series on the State of the Town, I would like to begin discussing the major services we offer residents. As an organization we have worked hard to improve the quality and efficiency of our services. In doing so, we are committed to meeting or exceeding the expectations of our customers. To accomplish this we recognize that once we learn to do something well, we will need to figure out how to do it even better.
The backbone of our services is our employees. Our workforce is made up of 112 full-time employees. Additionally, we have 15 permanent part-time employees. These men and women are committed to excellence in town government. I am proud of the team we have and find that we are able to attract the best and the brightest candidates because of the reputation for our commitment to our services and our employees. The fact that over fifty percent of our employees have been with us for over 10 years is a testament to the work family we have created.
The challenge of providing services is to meet the ever-increasing pressures of rising costs of salaries and benefits, inflationary factors on the purchase of goods and equipment and the growth in the town, while holding the line on spending and taxes. Since 1994, we have added 1,040 new homes and almost 6.5 miles of new roads. Additionally, like all sectors of life today, the requirements placed on local governments require us to be more sophisticated and savvy in order to satisfy the law and the state and federal bureaucracies.
The Highway Department is by far our biggest department. The total Highway budget is over $4.2 million, which represents a third of our total town operating budget. Many of the services the Highway Department provides are very visible to you including yard debris collection, road repair, and snow and ice removal.
Today we have 98 miles of Town roads that we are solely responsible for. Annually, we improve approximately 5 to 6 miles of town roads which could include complete rehabilitation (milling and paving) of our older roads or maintenance (oil and stone or crack filling) of our newer roads.
Understanding that we were in a period when we needed to increase the amount of rehabilitation work we were completing, in 2002 the Town Board and I established a capital reserve fund for Highway repair and committed an additional $150,000 to our annual funding for road repair. This year we will complete a rating of our entire town highway system so we can develop a better long-range projection of road repair needs.
In winter months, the Town is responsible for over 150 miles of roadways since we also maintain the 53 miles of county and state roads within our community. To accomplish this task, we use an average of 7,200 tons of salt and average about 280 hours of overtime per week.
The job of dealing with snow and ice is an area I believe our crews excel in. We receive many compliments about the condition of our roads and I know that the men and women of the Highway department take great pride in their work. Their work is complicated by the weather conditions they face. Often, storms come in clusters as evidenced by January 2004 where our crews were out twenty-one straight days. Their work is also influenced by temperature since salt does not work below 15°. Their job can be difficult but I know most days we get up to begin our commute to work and our crews have the roads ready for us.
The collection of yard debris is another major service area. We know that you take great pride in your property and your neighborhood, and we strive to provide a yard debris collection service that is consistent with that. We are proud that we are one of the first communities in this area to completely recycle the yard debris materials into reusable materials such as compost and mulch.
The yard debris collection program actually falls into three categories. Grass, weeds and cuttings are picked up weekly from April through December. This is material that must be placed in bags or containers and amounts to over 2,200 tons annually. Brush and branches are the bigger materials collected weekly and then ground through a tub grinder and turned into wood mulch. Last year we collected almost 3,000 truckloads of materials from April to the end of October. In the fall, we concentrate on the collection of leaves from November until all the leaves are picked up or the weather turns on us. We typically have about six to eight weeks to get the task done and during this time we collect over 2,000 truckloads of leaves. This material is composted and used by many residents in their gardens.
Our goal in leaf collection is to complete a cycle through the town every two weeks. To support this, the Town Board and I authorized the purchase of four new leaf vacuums which are much more efficient and durable. This is a service which is greatly affected by weather, but we are continuing to look for ways to improve how we react to these conditions so we can get the leaves collected from your front yard.
Next week, I will discuss our other major services including Parks, Recreation, Library and our General Government services. As always we value your input on the services we deliver and would love to hear from you.
Other Supervisor columns are available here.