AMHERST — Recognition that Department of Public Works employees are enduring poor working conditions at the 586 South Pleasant St. headquarters is leading members of the Town Council to suggest moving faster on both getting a new building constructed and identifying temporary locations for operations.
While a building committee has started meeting, and the current site has been identified as the best place for a new building, the urgency to improve employee accommodations is becoming more acute, councilors say.
Their discussion at a special session Monday came after members of the Department of Public Works Associations again described what they are enduring, such as a leaky roof, mold and offices that have been closed off.
At a meeting dedicated to issues facing the DPW and its employees, including a contract that expired last July, councilors focused on how to find town-owned sites from which the DPW could operate soon, such as the mostly vacant North Amherst School, which had previously been both a Head Start program and the Amherst Survival Center, and Wildwood School, which is expected to be closed by this fall.
The current plan, though still in its infancy, calls for knocking down the more than 100-year-old trolley barn from which the DPW has operated since the 1940s, and to use sites, such as the Ruxton site off Pulpit Hill Road, near Puffer’s Pond in North Amherst, as a possible temporary location.
Scattered satellite sites would continue to be used, as well, such as the trees and grounds division, which operates from a building next to War Memorial Pool, and the wastewater treatment plant at the Hadley edge of the University of Massachusetts campus.
For councilors, questions centered on whether there is swing space available with actual unoccupied buildings, allowing Town Manager Paul Bockelman to move forward with the $35 million project that, two years ago, he said could break ground this year.
District 1 Councilor Cathy Schoen expressed frustration that it took so long to put together a building committee, which just started meeting, and whether there was “fire in the belly” of town officials to get the project done. She had experienced that while chairing the Elementary School Building Committee.
“We moved faster than this,” Schoen said. “I just don’t understand the pace.”
District 4 Councilor Jennifer Taub said her feeling, too, is there has been no sense of urgency. She said there is a need for immediate temporary space. “It almost needs to be tomorrow,” Taub said.
Talk about a new DPW has been ongoing for a number of years, and at one time the current site was being considered for a new fire station to replace the Central fire station. But now the current site is preferred, even if it is too small for all operations.
Bockelman said it has the “fewest barriers to success,” as the town already knows the site conditions and those who live nearby are accustomed to the presence of trucks going in and out throughout the day and at other times, such as snowstorms.
In 2019, Amherst College offered a 27-acre site on South East Street, north of Stanley Street and Tamarack Drive, with a 99-year lease, but Bockelman declined that after neighborhood opposition.
As part of her constituency, District 2 Councilor Lynn Griesemer said she understood the concerns from abutters, that it would mean essentially placing a dump near where low- and moderate-income residents live.
That led the town in 2021 to put out a request for proposals to purchase or lease sites within 5 miles of downtown. Had a site been identified, the hope had been for mid-2022 borrowing authorization and then to get a new project underway.
At Large Councilor Andy Churchill said swing space is essential for the DPW, but Churchill said this also shows the town needs to find a way to push for more economic development so the burden doesn’t continue to fall on taxpayers.
One way to speed up the process could be to condemn the current building.
District 1 Councilor Jil Brevik wondered if there’s any way for the Town Council to declare it uninhabitable, sympathizing with the concern that municipal workers may be falling ill.
“I can’t get past that we’re putting people’s health at risk when they show up at work tomorrow,” Brevik said.
Bockelman, though, said condemning a building is not in the council’s jurisdiction.
While no decisions were made, the discussion also sets the stage for a talks about adjustments to water and sewer rates in April and whether there is a way to get UMass to pay more to cover some of the costs of DPW operations.
