A good turnout for the Common Council non partisan meeting. Tonight’s major topic was the discussion of the long range capital spending needs of the city.

Some highlights:

Hal Alvord spoke about how the DPW has brought grant money for bridge and infrastructure repair and maintenance. Those grant opportunites are often found by staff that interested in the issue and Alvord remarked, “it’s not like we are just sitting around saying, hey city throw money at things we are responsible for.” Alvord cited that the safety program they put in place resulted in fewer people injured, fewer worker comp claims and city liability cases are down.

Alvord concluded with, “Having said all that, most of the work we do in DPW is done by people and equipment and it gets tot a point that you can’t do anymore with what you’ve got.”

Mike Coffey thanked Alvord, and said, “I find your candor and honesty refreshing.”

Alvord responded, “I think you’re in the minority.”

There was some discussion about a 5 year paving plan for road improvement and how Alvord identified that DPW needs about $5 million investment in paving. “No one has ever made a commitment to 5 million dollars,’ Alvord said, “And the 2.5 million that don’t make it this year, slips back to next year, you never get to accomplish your goals.”

The former Police Station, expected to cost $2 million to demolish, is not going to be tackled this year. and each year that makes it slip back and cost more.

Gwenn Briggs pointed out putting together a five year plan was similar to what we did with the schools.

Mike Coffey asked if having a commission to handle long range capital needs was a good idea. Alvord responded, “any municipality would benefit on having a long term plan on what you want to achieve.”

Doug Hempstead said, “we focus on a two year window, yet there are more draining projects that DPW asked to do. By not doing everything we are compounding those issues, it’s lots easier to find a little something form a big something, then finding the money to finda big project. The fire station is not going to go away, either we need a rehabilitation or we need a new one. The school project failed, we forgot to put some kind of maintenance project, because history in the past was to ignore it till it all falls apart.

Hempstead concluded that “We got to stop things from sliding, what is the follow up to what we are given.”

Mike Coffey said, “Our schools have to get finished. We just did $200 million on schools, and where are we on that.

Doug Hempstead added, “And we need to add the long term maintenance stuff to the projects, because otherwise you have long term issues. Wouldn’t we like to see what they were talking about 20 years ago to see what needed to get fixed in the city?”

Joanne Romano, “Because we as a council change very 2 years, without a long term plan it’s all in the personality of the board. We are only here for 2 years. It’s a good idea.”

Mike Coffey added, “Going into the next month what is the best way to do this, should we have a blue ribbon panel …?”

Nick Kydes was concerned that even though money was allocated to fix the leaky roofs, there was no way to know if that money was spent on roofs.

Coffey concluded the non-partisan meeting with a mention that the Board of Ed should be part of the committee.