Letter: The Time is Now for a New DPW Building

If you heard about the new DPW Building as an item on this spring’s Town Meeting agenda you may be wondering if we really need this and if now is the time.

The answers are yes and yes. We need the building and we need it now.

The current DPW facility, adjacent to the middle school, is at best in deplorable condition, and in, at worst, illegal condition. It regularly floods, is inadequately sized, and is, frankly, disgusting. It needs to be replaced immediately.

Although there are many moral reasons why we need a new facility, such as ill-functioning toilets, and a lack of shower and changing facilities, let me speak the language of taxpayers and lay out a few financial reasons why we need a new building now:

Repairs: If Town Meeting doesn’t approve a new building, we will have to shell out around $2 million for repairs to the existing facility. This is the classic “throwing good money after bad.” The old building needs to go – should the town really invest millions in something that is only a patch-fix? Isn’t that just throwing money away?

Washing: One of the inadequacies of the current building is that there is no ability to wash our vehicles when they come back from their daily jobs.  Although this may not sound like a big deal, it is. These trucks salt and sand our roads for hours on end in the winter, and that salt eats away at the metal under-carriage of the vehicles. The rust that accumulates on our very expensive trucks may be shortening their lives by as much as 25 percent. Having the ability to wash the trucks will extend their usefulness and thus, save taxpayer dollars. 

Don’t believe the FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt are great tactics when you don’t have the facts on your side. You may have read about unsafe methane levels and reports that the proposed site is a “ticking time bomb.” The fact is that Weston & Sampson, professional engineers who have designed the plans for this new facility, have designed dozens of similar facilities throughout New England. The majority of these facilities have been placed near capped landfills, like we are planning to do here in Wayland. Methane is a known substance, and can be safely alleviated via a methane mitigation system. Such a system is part of the proposed Wayland facility. There is no rational reason to fear that methane will be any more of an issue here than it has been in the dozens of other facilities currently in use across the region.

In conclusion, a new DPW facility isn’t “sexy.” It’s not going to bring in more tax revenue, it is not going to educate our children better, and it is not going to reduce our taxes. However, like when your home needs a new furnace or a new roof, it is something that simply needs to be done in the name of safety and maintenance. It is long over due, and the time for it is now.

I encourage you to vote an enthusiastic “yes” for a new DPW facility at Town Meeting.

Respectfully,

Chris Brown
Charena Road

Chris Brown is a former Chairman of the Wayland Board of Public Works