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Date: 2/7/2022
LUDLOW – Following the significant winter storm that impacted Western Massachusetts on Jan. 29, representatives the Ludlow Council on Aging met with the Board of Selectmen during its Feb. 1 meeting to discuss plans for clearing the sidewalks at the new Senior Center.
John DaCruz, a member of the Council on Aging, said the new Senior Center has much more sidewalk space than the old one.
“It is a new town building and one of the concerns we have as a council is that the snow be properly removed at the center. This parking lot and facility is much larger than the old Senior Center. At the new center there is over 2,000 linear feet of sidewalk,” he said.
As a result of the recent winter storm, DaCruz said the Senior Center staff had to clear the sidewalks.
“On Monday we had eight staff members from the Senior Center outside cleaning those sidewalks and the bump stops, you had the director, the program coordinator, the activities coordinator, the outreach coordinator, the dispatcher, the van driver, the custodian and the cook out there for two hours cleaning,” he said.
DaCruz added the center is one of the most popular places in town in terms of foot traffic.
“I would argue there is not other municipal building in town that get as much foot traffic on a daily basis as the senior center. You also have to consider the demographic of the users, a fall for a senior can be life changing and falls are the leading cause of injury related death among persons that are 65 years of age or older,” he said. “These walkways have to be cleaned properly and promptly.”
DaCruz added the council came up with a couple options to address their snow clearing needs, hiring an outside contractor or adding the Senior Center sidewalks to the town’s list of safety sidewalks, which would allow a contractor to be hired by the Department of Public Works to clear the sidewalks.
Board of Public Works Chairman Stephen Santos said the Department of Public Works (DPW) would not be taking care of the sidewalks around the building.
“Through this whole thing, myself and my board have been adamant that we are not taking care of the sidewalks around the building. We will do the town sidewalks in the front of the building, which is the whole length of the parcel and the side of the building that WestMass just put in which goes down State Street,” he said.
He added that the DPW is short-staffed for the work it needs to do around town with snow removal.
“Our problem is we have a very limited staff, this last snowstorm we had, the longest guy stayed 26 hours straight, the minimum the 11 guys we had worked was 18 hours. So, after 18 hours of pretreating, plowing, salting, removing snow on the corners and getting to the schools, I do not think anybody here after 18 hours is going to want to shovel sidewalks,” Santos said.
Board of Selectman member Derek DeBarge said a decision needed to be made about clearing the sidewalks at the Senior Center.
“I have never agreed with the fact that the DPW should not do the Senior Center, I think the DPW should do all of our municipal buildings, but the song remains the same – staffing, salaries and all of that. I do not agree with contracting out for municipal buildings, but we need to have a decision made tonight because it is ludicrous the employees are going out there,” he said.
Were the DPW to take over clearing all the sidewalks, Santos said it might not get to the center for several days due to the lack of staffing.
“The only thing I can see is to get contracted out, if not it might be two days before I get there. If take three of my employees and go and shovel out the Senior Center, the school safety walks will not get done,” he said. “Something has to suffer, I only have so many hands.”
Board of Selectmen member Manuel Silva said he was in favor of hiring people as soon as possible.
“If we have such a shortage, let’s get somebody on board one way we or the other. It seems to me that we need to do it and time and time again when we talk about this, whether it is the Senior Center or the river walk we are short. But let’s get somebody on board, we have to,” he said.
With the DPW short-staffed, Santos said he reached out to places that have provided aid in the past with little success.
“I did reach out to the Sherriff’s Department and asked if they were able because we have used them in the past and they have been great to us, but we are minus that too because of COVID, they have nobody left for us,” he said. “We tried to get it figured because I do not want to leave any municipal building untouched.”
While Town Administrator Ellie Villano agreed to find a contractor to clear the sidewalks, she said the timing could be difficult.
“I have one caution, you are at the mercy of the timing, there is no guarantee that any contractor I get is going to come in at 7 a.m. when everybody else needs to be shoveled out and plowed out also. I will reach out to the DPW to get a list of their landscapers also,” she said.
The board unanimously approved a motion to allow Villano to search for an independent contractor to take care of the sidewalks at the Senior Center, with the DPW covering until the contractor is found.
During the meeting, the board also met with concerned parents over books concerning topics of LGBTQ+ at Baird Middle School, Critical Race Theory and masking in schools but the board took no action on the matter because it does not fall under its purview.
The Ludlow Board of Selectmen next met on Feb. 8 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Feb. 17 edition of The Reminder.