Plan breathing new life into aging Lynn DPW fleet

LYNN – With fall leaves just starting to drop City Councilors have approved a plan to lease heavy city trucks so Public Works crews can plow and salt roads during the winter, then quickly switch to pothole repairs.Public Works officials now lease heavy snowplows every winter under an arrangement requiring to return the big trucks to their owners when winter ends. Public Works Commissioner Andrew Hall proposed – and councilors endorsed Tuesday night – a lease-to-own plan for five trucks at an initial annual cost of $181,000 – that will eventually add the trucks to the city fleet with only a $21,000 increase in the current rental price.Hall said leasing the trucks allows the city to modernize a fleet of aging and rusting trucks and plows, that includes only two big trucks purchased in the last two years and a 1962 grader no one in the department knows how to drive.The lease vehicles are equipped with hydraulic hooks that can convert the truck from a vehicle distributing road salt on local streets to a trash hauler to a pothole patcher with a batch of asphalt mounted on the truck?s bed.?Under lease-to-own, we have vehicles for 12 months so they can serve us in the summer and then – after five years – we own them,” Hall said.His council-backed push to put newer vehicles into the Public Works 25-vehicle heavy equipment fleet parked off Commercial Street extension reflects councilors? concerns about ensuring the department has enough employees and equipment to keep city parks, streets, sidewalks and other public areas clean and maintained.Councilors during a Tuesday meeting ticked off a list of repair requests passed on to them by residents, including deteriorating sidewalks near the Brookline Street site of the new Marshall Middle School and a street covering at Eastern Avenue and New Ocean Street that rattles when cars drive over the cover.?We?re getting a lot of complaints about it,” said Ward 3 Councilor Darren Cyr.The Brookline Street sidewalks are on a Public Works repair list, said Associate Commissioner Lisa Nerich, along with streets scheduled to be repaved across the city, including Burrill Avenue, Fearless Avenue and Normandy Road.?Hopefully, they will get done this fall,” Nerich said.Hall said he needs to fill Public Works job vacancies after two employees took jobs with the Water and Sewer Commission, three finished temporary assignments, one started National Guard duty and another died – leaving seven vacancies in the 47-employee department.He reviewed with councilors a list of resident complaints calling for repairs across the city ranging from curb installations to tree inspections and brush cutting. According to the list, city workers managed between April and August to repair public fences across the city and patch 116 potholes, but complaints about cracked and deteriorating sidewalks total 1,067 and Public Works logged 645 requests to trim public trees – a 15 percent increase from spring to late summer.?We have one regular guy who does tree trimming,” he told councilors.Nerich said a council suggestion to mount a large-scale, one-time tree trimming effort would be “very expensive.” The complaint lists also includes 378 calls by residents requesting tree stump removal. Cyr said the stumps rot and turn into neighborhood nuisances.?People use them as trash barrels,” he said.