Councilors seek separate Maintenance Department
By DAN MORIARTY
Staff Writer
WESTFIELD – Six members of the City Councilor sponsored a motion Thursday night requesting the Law Department and the council’s Legislative & Ordinance Committee to draft an ordinance establishing a new municipal Maintenance Department Thursday night.
The motion, unanimously approved, germinated at the joint L&O and Finance committees meeting conducted on Thursday, March 8 with consultants working on the city’s $12 million Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) green energy program and the proposed $17 million energy efficiency bond program.
Several members of the committees asked for plans to maintain municipal and school buildings being repaired and upgraded through that spending.
Ward 2 Councilor James E. Brown said Thursday night that a “recurring theme” during that session last week was maintaining the city’s inventory of buildings.
“Other cities in the area have a building (maintenance) department that takes control of a city buildings,” Brown said. “So as we spend millions on these buildings we have to have a way to maintain them.”
At-large Councilor James R. Adams said that photographic evidence presented last week of deterioration is “pretty disturbing, to see the condition of buildings with leaking roofs, windows and pipes.
“We’re at $50 to $60 million to repair them,” he said. “We need to have a serious discussion on why (the current maintenance system) is not working.”
Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr., chairman of the Finance Committee, said “part of the reason we’re in this situation is the way we fund departments, the first thing to get cut is maintenance, and those funds don’t come back (to maintenance line items).
“We see it all over the city,” Onofrey said. “This building where we’re sitting now us falling in on us. We have to have professional management to maintain these buildings and to give this body the ability to make sure maintenance is funded.”
At-large Councilor David A,. Flaherty said the city committed $15 million last year and is considering an additional $17 million this year to fix the city’s school and municipal buildings.
“And another $40 million is coming in the next wave,” he said. “We don’t have that money. That’s almost $80 million we could have saved by having proper maintenance.
“I asked Siemens for a maintenance schedule and budget, one of the deliverables I expected to see tonight, but have not,” Flaherty said.
Adams said the current school maintenance system delegates that responsibility to building principals.
“The system we have set up now requires principals and custodians to maintain their building. That’s not the job of a principal, it’s the job of a maintenance department. The job of a principal is education, that’s what they’re trained to do,” he said.
Brown said that half of the city budget is dedicated to the city’s school system, “but we have no control over how that money is allocated.
“That’s what this department would do, the funds would be in the city’s side of the annual budget, then it’s up to the 13 people in this chamber to ensure that department is properly funded,” he said.
