A presentation for the Department of Public Works’ (DPW) Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget led by Director John Scenna was given at Monday’s Select Board meeting.
Besides a series of capital improvement projects to improve departmental facilities and town infrastructure, the biggest focus of Scenna’s plan is on the internal restructuring and regrouping of the 46 employees in the DPW to better serve the community.
The three new collective bargaining agreements made with the administration and engineering employees, operations employees, and custodial, building maintenance, and bus driver employees that make up the DPW were also included in the budget.
“We’ve made a lot of changes over the last six to eight months, and we are starting to see some return on those changes that we’ve made,” Scenna said. “The overall mission of the Public Works departments is to maintain, preserve, and protect infrastructure. That’s what we do.”
According to Scenna, the department’s top capital need is its fleet, which they hope to address over the next few years, starting with replacing a front-end loader that has degraded substantially after being caught in a fire a decade ago.
He also hopes to get a wood chipper for the DPW, which demonstrated its potential usefulness last Friday when high winds scattered branches into roadways across Lynnfield.
Scenna also took the time to introduce new initiatives that he thinks are worth investing in, including an annual roof repair program, an annual floor repair program, restoring the Meeting House, the Pope Richard house, and an asset management system.
Another facility that needs upgrading is snow operations and storage, which can only store a single storm’s worth of salt.
“Storms are very different today than they were 20 years ago. It was cold before the snow, it was cold during the snow, and it was cold after the snow,” Scenna said. “Now it’s above freezing, below freezing, above freezing, below freezing, and that changes the whole strategy to snow and ice because you get more ice, and you never get snow without ice.”
This year’s increased snow load has led to the town spending over $600,000 on snow compared to a combined spending of around $500,000 in the past three years. As a result, Scenna is proposing a $320,000 bump in the FY26 snow budget to a total of $450,000.
Another project Scenna is requesting funding for is a $50,000 deep dive into fixing flooding issues that are damaging property in neighborhoods at Durham Drive and Gray Lane, Glen Meadow Park, Monroe Street, Walnut Street, and Dale Road.
“The problem is that when that water goes up over the sidewalk, it goes down along someone’s property and into the backyard, through their pool, and causes extensive damage and extensive destruction,” he explained. “Those are people’s homes, and these are projects that really touch and impact them.”
Finally, Scenna’s capital improvement project presentation touched on two important infrastructure areas: rehabilitation and preservation of athletic facilities, including a placeholder for future turf replacement needs, and the maintenance of roadways.
Following the failed ballot measure for a decade-long road maintenance project that would’ve cost $12.85 million, the DPW will continue what they’ve done in the past and invest $300,000 towards roadway improvements.
“It’s great for the public to actually be able to kind of see behind the scenes at DPW and know that there is a lot going on. Sometimes we forget all the different areas that DPW is responsible for,” Select Board Chair Dick Dalton said. “A lot of people wouldn’t really think school custodians come into your purview, but they do. So I think that really was very much worthwhile.”
