The possibility of a significant outbreak of COVID-19 and how it might affect all town departments, but especially public works, as winter arrives in full force, is a concern of city and town officials.
Greenfield Department of Public Works Director Marlo Warner II said his staff are taking “so many steps to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“If it were to happen, we would contact local contractors and mutual aid, but first we’d pull employees from all four of our locations, including the wastewater treatment plant, engineers and others — many of us have licenses to drive plows,” he said.
Warner said there are at least 20 other people in the department who could be called in to plow.
“That would only have to happen if the entire yard went down,” he said. “It would take us longer to clean up, but we’d make sure to keep roads safe for the public.”
Warner said he knows you should never say “never,” but he’s confident that if his employees continue their diligence when it comes to COVID-19 safety precautions, they could very likely avoid an outbreak within the department this winter.
“We’re sanitizing everything, including doorknobs,” he said. “Plow operators are responsible for making sure their trucks are disinfected before and after their shifts.”
Plow drivers don’t have to wear masks when they are driving alone, but they must wear them and practice social distancing when they are around others.
“They don’t congregate to eat any longer,” Warner said. “And we assign the same equipment to the same people as much as possible.”
Warner said overall, the more than 60 people working for the DPW have remained relatively healthy throughout the pandemic. He said a few in the early days of COVID-19 had to quarantine because they thought they might have been exposed to someone who tested positive. He said the department will continue to ask that people who think or know they’ve been exposed quarantine themselves.
“We’ve stuck to the protocol,” he said. “This isn’t just luck that we’ve stayed healthy.”
Mayor Roxann Wedegartner’s Chief of Staff Danielle Letourneau said the same goes for the Greenfield Police and Fire departments.
“If something like that were to happen, emergency management is regional, so we’d have that backup, but both departments have also been extremely diligent through it all,” Letourneau said. “They don’t congregate and they are very careful. It’s unlikely that even if someone tested positive in one of the departments that it would affect the entire department.”
She said, for instance, all four shifts of each department are isolated from each other, and then everyone within those shifts practices social distancing and wears masks.
In late October, a firefighter and six other people were self-isolating and 38 others were quarantining after an indoor gathering that resulted in an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases. Despite the isolated incident, the rest of the Fire Department wasn’t impacted.
Letourneau said smaller city departments are also practicing COVID-19 safety measures.
“Some are not essential,” she said. “Others, like finance and business, are hugely important, but we’ve crossed-trained people, so if a few got sick, others could step up for a couple of weeks or so.”
Employees in some smaller departments work fully remotely or rotate, with one or two working from home while one or two come to the office.
“That way, not everyone is packed into City Hall,” Letourneau said. “We want to minimize everyone’s risk. That’s why we closed City Hall to the public again.”
Letourneau said all city departments were involved in reviewing operating procedures early in the year after Wedegartner took office and before the pandemic hit.
“We were pretty well prepared for something like this, even though we didn’t know this was going to happen,” she said. “We’re doing all we can to prevent a scenario where too many people are out, and we’ve got plans to make sure we have coverage if some do get sick. We’re pretty pleased with the results.”
Warner and Letourneau said smaller towns actually have more to worry about if a department gets hit with the virus because typically there are only two, three or four people working in it. Because of smaller staffing numbers, it’s more difficult to get help from surrounding towns.
Montague Town Administrator Steve Ellis said the “critical function” of the town’s Department of Public Works comes into focus as winter weather arrives.
DPW Superintendent Tom Bergeron was unavailable for comment this week, but Ellis said he could speak to the issue, as he has been part of the discussions.
“First, it is important to note that the town of Montague has implemented policies that reflect a prevention-first approach to reducing the likelihood that any individual employee who might have exposure to COVID-19 would transmit it to others in the workplace,” Ellis said. “This includes health and temperature screenings, mandatory mask policies, minimizing the number of individuals working or dining in confined areas and creating policies that allow staff to stay home in the event they may have COVID-19 or had direct exposure to others who tested positive.”
He said Montague’s approach to plowing would vary based on the extent of any COVID-19 outbreak among staff members.
“If some staff were unable to perform their duties due to illness, it would result in reduced ability to plow all routes in as timely a fashion as residents are accustomed to,” Ellis said. “In that instance, Tom (Bergeron) would implement a modified version of our existing prioritized plan for road and lot clearing in consultation with other public safety officials. The safety of the public and our plow drivers would be the priority.”
Ellis said that scenario happens any time there is a storm and staff are out due to any types of illness or injury, so town officials feel confident in the DPW’s ability to react effectively if the number of people affected is limited.
“In the event that the number of staff who were sick was so great that public safety could not be established within a reasonable period of time,” he continued, “Tom would notify me and the Selectboard chair and we would take whatever steps necessary and feasible to secure timely mutual aid from other communities and/or private contractors.”
Ellis said that wouldn’t be ideal, but he and other officials are confident the town would see its way through.
“Our DPW and our community is nothing if not resilient.”
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.