Managing storm water in the Ham
At the last finance sub committee meeting, the councilors heard a proposal from DPW, for the 2020 budget. They are asking for 1.8 million dollars to create a Storm Water Management group with-in DPW. The start-up costs are around 675,000 to hire 10 new employees and some trucks that will deal soley with catch basins, and run off from our roads. All of this comes from the State and Fed's who are mandating ( without funding) every Town in Mass to comply with State and Federal guidelines.
You may think, that's not a lot of money and perhaps it isn't, but the indication that I get from the DPW and the CFO, is that someday soon, we will all be paying for a storm water department, just like the water and sewer departments we pay for now in a separate account.
Have a look at 1:30:00 to 2:27:00
http://207.172.210.8:5002/CablecastPublicSite/show/1704?channel=1
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 1:09 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Another city department to pay for? We have survived all these years without these extra 10 people plus their equipment. Why do we suddenly need them now? Is this related to climate change?
Will this save the lives of beavers? If so, I'm all in
This whole issue is about cleaning up our act when it rains. Everything from salt and sand and trash and dead animals, etc, etc, get into our drainage pipes. The Feds and the State have initiated these mandates years ago and we haven't done enough to make our rivers and streams less polluted.
I did hear one DPW official say, they will stop using sand on our roads, so they don't have to spend all year cleaning out catch basins. They even want to bring the catch basin cleaning that is now farmed out to a contractor. A new special truck appears in today's MWDN under legal notices as a RFP.
I did ask GK about the beavers in the last FinCom Sub Committee meeting,and he tried to sneak in the question, but DPW shrugged it off. There was no mention of any funds for the beaver problems.
So we are not going to fund a solution to a problem that got Framingham all kinds of negative attention, but we are spending money for a truck to clean up sand? How much does that truck cost us? Does this seem a bit irresponsible to anyone other than me?
I wrote to G King and he said it was already approved in last years budget. I wonder if it's the same budget that couldn't be well vetted because they didn't have enough time.
It looks more and more evident that the Finance Sub Committee is just not questioning the reasons why these purchases are being requested.
Who is the chair of the finance subcommittee? We should start asking them to do their job
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