A Well-Oiled Team

By David Beers

Tucked away between Haystack Mountain and Center Cemetery is our town garage at 36 Old Colony Road. It is from this base of operations that the town’s six-person crew maintains our town’s public infrastructure. Troy LaMere is the supervisor.  Tommy Gorski has been the crew foreman for over 20 years. Joe Green is the welder. Jay Bottass runs the loader. Howard Crunden is the mechanic. Bob Marieni is the energetic new guy. The same well-oiled camaraderie of the state road crew is also readily apparent here. 

In addition to our 52 miles of town roads, the crew maintains our culverts, storm drains, downtown parking, sidewalks and most town-owned properties (town hall, ballfields, transfer station). Besides winter snow and ice removal, road maintenance includes regular culvert and storm drain cleaning, road sign maintenance, roadside mowing, and roadside tree removals/pruning. Most residents are unaware that the town has a fifty-foot right-of-way for it all of its roads that includes about ten feet beyond the pavement edge on either side. This shoulder area requires the regular attention of our town crew to ensure safety. Vegetation is mowed to maintain traffic sightlines and tree hazards are addressed.

Back at the garage, the two heated four-bay garages are clean and organized. Unlike the state, the town can keep all of its equipment inside, which greatly extends equipment life. The equipment includes six plow trucks, two dump trucks, large pickup truck with plow, three trailers, loader, sidewalk sweeper/snowblower, wood chipper, tractor, roller, skid steer and the senior bus. 

Wrapped around the edges of the property is outdoor storage for riprap, stone, gravel, millings and sand. There are neatly organized piles of culverts, concrete blocks, drainage basins and traffic cones. Just like the state garage, there is the tall, cavernous salt/sand storage barn. Unlike the state, this salt is treated with molasses to give it a brown color. Yep, you read that right, molasses. The molasses replaces the magnesium chloride brine the state uses and serves the same purpose of eliminating the bouncing and scattering of salt pellets. It is less toxic than magnesium chloride to both our cars and our environment. 

Since Jan. 2020, LaMere’s leadership has created a can-do vitality that permeates the garage atmosphere. Extra projects are happening that make our town better and save taxpayer dollars in the long-term. 

The sidewalks that have fallen apart are being replaced. While LaMere tries to use stone and concrete whenever possible, he had to use pavement on the sidewalks along Route 44. LaMere says that the state uses so much salt here that any other surface will quickly degrade. For the same salty reason, LaMere has made washing the trucks after each storm standard operating procedure. There is separate garage just for this purpose. The trucks also receive an annual protective undercarriage coating.

The town farm property at the transfer station has been recently cleaned up to become an in-house recycling area. In the spring, the crew sweeps all our roads. These road sweepings are screened here for winter road sand. Material removed from drainage ditches are also screened to create topsoil for various projects. Old asphalt from both state and town road repaving projects are crushed and screened into millings here. This free resource is gradually being spread on our ten miles of non-paved roads to create a smooth hard surface that is permeable to water, yet does not erode and degrade like gravel and dirt. This work is saving the town over $40,000 per year in gravel costs. 

The crew is ahead of schedule on a ten-year plan to replace all the pavement in town by 2030. LaMere has begun chip sealing all of the new pavement to extend its life. After new pavement is laid down, it is allowed to season for a year and then a tar coating is spread with a fine gravel top layer. Tires are able to grab this ‘chip’ surface easily and water sheds off readily. The chipseal will protect the pavement underneath for ten years and it prevents any potholes or cracking caused by the freezing and thawing of water. If applied again within ten years, the pavement will have its life extended by decades.

 Our resourceful town crew is working behind the scenes to ensure that our town runs well. They deserve our gratitude.