Plumb won't rush change
Public Works dept. gets new figurehead

By COURTNEY LAMDIN | Staff Writer
courtney@miltonindependent.com

A new hire overseeing a new department isn’t easy work.

That’s why Craig Plumb, the town of Milton’s new Public Works director and town engineer, hasn’t had much time yet to learn all the inner workings of the newly-formed department.

“There hasn’t been one day yet that I’ve looked at the clock and wondered if the day was over,” Plumb said before the holidays. “Time has flown by very quickly. I attribute that to there’s a lot going on.”

Plumb was hired in October to head the Public Works department, which combined the former Highway and Buildings and Grounds departments into one. Plumb, who previously worked as deputy director of public works in So. Burlington for 11 years, started December 5. His salary is $72,323.

Plumb earned a degree in civil engineering in 1991. Since then, he’s worked primarily in the public sector excepting a three-year stint at Williston-based Green Mountain Engineering. He also put in five cumulative years at the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

Plumb has spent his first weeks in Milton getting to know who’s who in his own department, which is learning a new reporting structure: Whereas before the wastewater superintendent reported to the town manager, the administrative assistant answered to the town engineer and the buildings and grounds superintendent fell under the highway foreman, now all employees report to Plumb.

The entire crew welcomed its new boss at a potluck lunch on Thursday, Dec. 22. As the group ate homemade macaroni and cheese and chili, Plumb said he’s there to make sure everyone has what they need.

That sentiment surfaced several times in Plumb’s interview: He said Milton’s public works employees are already doing their job well – his role is to be a conduit to Town Manager Brian Palaia to echo his crew’s needs.

“I didn’t come to recreate the wheel,” Plumb said. “I came to help make it better.”
Not only did Plumb start in a time of transition, he entered right at the beginning of budget season.

Palaia and other town employees had already built the department’s proposed budget before Plumb came aboard, and Plumb hasn’t made many changes, he said.

Plumb recognized the former Highway department’s tendency to go overbudget in maintenance: The line item was overspent by $31,000 in fiscal year 2010 and by  $11,000 in FY ’11; halfway through FY ’12, 82 percent of the $60,000 budget is spent, Palaia said. Plumb didn’t want to publicly discuss means to lower those expenditures just yet.

Plumb did note the capital improvement program, which recommends a new dump truck every five years.

“If you extend something out beyond its useful life because you don’t have the money to pay for it, then you pay for it one way or another,” Plumb said. “We’re gonna do the best we can, but there’s a lot to talk about in the future.”

Palaia said maintenance costs have spiked because many trucks only have a five-year warranty, but the town has owned them for much longer. A 2002 and a 2004 tandem dump truck, which cost about $170,000 each, are both out of warranty. One of them is proposed for replacement using funds from FY ’13 and ’14, Palaia said.

In So. Burlington, Plumb managed a fleet maintenance crew that worked on every town vehicle except police cruisers. The team got the trucks, school buses and fire engines back on the road noticeably faster than sending them for repairs, he said.

Palaia said to make that work here, the town would need a new public works facility – a $3 million project studied in 2004 but not planned until FY ’17, according to the capital improvement plan.

As-is, the crew doesn’t have the space or training to form a maintenance team, Palaia said. He isn’t sure if it would make sense financially.

“There’s a lot of questions being asked about whether or not it’s economical to bring that function in-house or keep it outside, but as things are right now, we don’t have the space to do that,” Palaia said.

For now, Plumb will make do with what the department has. Winter is here, and those operations are already underway. In So. Burlington, the city toyed with using salt brine for road maintenance, which Plumb said can be cost effective if used on pavement.

Milton has about 80 paved road miles, compared to So. Burlington’s 95, but Plumb said the brine concept is worth researching here.

“Everything can be looked at to see where it can be made better,” he said. “You change where there’s opportunity to make things better, not for the sake of change.”

Palaia said he hired Plumb – one of a dozen applicants – for his experience working for the state agency.

“[That] will give him some positive insight into how to work successfully with state officials and state programs that will fund some of the improvements that we want to make,” Palaia said.

Plumb is happy to be in Milton and is most looking forward to working on the variety of projects in the hopper, including the town core sewer project and Route 7/Middle Road/Railroad Street intersection.

The Selectboard commissioned the Metropolitan Planning Organization to study alternative designs for the dangerous intersection in October. The MPO will present its recommendations next month.