The Streets Department is the largest division and is comprised of 44 full time Teamsters, 1 Electrician (AFSCME) and 4.4 salaried employees. They maintain 176 miles of streets, plus 28 alleys and over 300 miles of mainline storm and sanitary sewers. As a preventative maintenance procedure, the sanitary sewers are cleaned annually. In 1999, the Streets Department took responsibility for maintenance of 15 sanitary sewer lift Stations as well.

Not only does the Streets Department plow our streets in the winter, but also for the balance of the year they are swept on an average of once every 10 days. They also patch and restore over 300 pavement excavations annually, made by various utilities and plumbers.

Some of the more varied duties performed by our DPW team include: installation and maintenance of over 7,600 traffic signs, maintenance of 28 signalized intersections, snow removal from City-owned sidewalks and unshoveled private sidewalks, weed cutting on both City property and by complaint; spring and fall cleanups of leaves and yard waste, brush pick-up 3 times per year, installation of downtown Christmas decorations, maintenance of 2 launch ramps, spring and fall duties related to the Marina piers, and maintenance of nearly 200 pieces of City equipment as well as other departmental and extra-departmental vehicles from other agencies that include squad cars to trucks to fire equipment.

In preparation for winter and prior to the actual snow plowing of streets, the men remove the leaf boxes from the trucks and install sanders. They place and fill 140 sand barrels at various corners. We are ten ready in short notice to mobilize 39 pieces of equipment to plow snow and to oversee private snow plowing equipment.

We continue to pursue new efficiencies in our operations. This is required to try and keep up with the exponential growth of the City infrastructure. We have not added staff to our DPW crews in over 30 years. Unfortunately, even with the following improvements, we need to add two full-time streets employees to our team. This request continues to be rejected as state budget concerns overwhelm us.

Last year, we tested a new leaf vac machine that was designed and fabricated by our own mechanics. The test was successful. We anticipate moving to a one-man operation for leaf pickup on two crews rather than a three-man operation as is currently in place.