ABERDEEN – An Aberdeen Township councilman has gone public with his concerns about the Department of Public Works (DPW).
During a recent Township Council meeting, Councilman Greg Cannon voiced concern about issues ranging from communication to customer service. He said better accountability is needed at the DPW.
While noting that matters such as this are usually discussed in private, Cannon said he believed it was important for Township Manager Bryan Russell to understand the recent history of the DPW and the issues the department has been facing under Director Sandra Caceres’ leadership.
Municipal officials did not make Caceres available to the Independent to respond to Cannon’s public comments.
Cannon said when the previous DPW director retired in 2015, officials hired Joe Clemente to run the department for one year. He said while officials sought a new director, Clemente wrote a book about how to modernize the DPW, manage Aberdeen’s parks and handle future projects.
“We basically hired a professional to tell us what to do and give us a book and that book was given to every candidate (for the position). The book explains exactly how to take care of the DPW in terms of routine maintenance, schedules, etc. It’s all in the book,” Cannon said.
By the end of 2016, Cannon said, Caceres was hired as the director and going into 2017 the DPW was operating well.
“… but we have never reached the next level because of a lack of communication and honestly … I frankly think a lack of effort in raising us to be able to be a department where everybody’s streets are swept every month, that cleans the parks, that keeps everything in order [and] that responds to resident complaints that are pretty serious,” Cannon said.
In April 2019, Cannon said, the council approved a $60,000 purchase of mulch for Cambridge Park. He said he was made aware in August that the mulch had been left in the sun behind the community center for three months.
Cannon said officials put $1 million into the DPW for three years in a row and that in 2019 half the funding was not spent.
He said while he was coaching a youth baseball game in the spring of 2019, he saw that someone had painted an obscenity on a wall at Midland Park. He said he refrains from calling a department head directly and follows the proper municipal channels to voice a concern.
Cannon said the obscenity was not removed until August and he said he had to try to explain to parents why the offensive word was still visible at the park for several months.
“That’s not the level of service that is detailed in the 2016 report and that’s not the level of service that has been expected by this council or relayed down the chain of command,” Cannon said.
He said other public works issues that have come up during the past few years have taken a significant amount of time to be resolved, including a leak on Edgeview Road.
Cannon said he has visited locations where residents have raised issues.
“This (report) is where I think accountability and my position as an elected official leads me to start talking about personnel. For me, it’s really not about micromanaging or about accountability.
“It’s about making sure that when the taxpayers pay a salary, that everyone does their job because that is what they elected me to do as their representative,” the councilman said.
Cannon told Russell, the township manager, he has his (Cannon’s) full support in trying to improve the situation at the DPW.
“You have my full faith and backing in getting accountability and executing the plan we put in place four-and-a-half years ago; whatever it takes and whatever we need to do to make that happen, because we have been completely off the rails,” Cannon told Russell.
Mayor Fred Tagliarini and Deputy Mayor Joseph Martucci agreed the DPW needs to do better.
