Highways

DPW Overview
The Department of Public Works (DPW) is responsible for the maintenance of all town roads. Depending on the season, the town crew focuses their energies on a variety of different responsibilities with the overall goal of maintaining safe roads.

Summer
The DPW maintains a busy schedule during the summer. Much of the summer is devoted to road paving related work, but DPW also does maintenance work. As soon as the weather and road conditions allow DPW starts removing sand and gravel from paved swales and paved ditches along roads. This usually requires hand sweeping. When ice has melted in catch basins, DPW uses the vactor truck to clean some catch basins. Snow plowing causes some damage to lawns. In the spring, DPW will repair the worst cases, especially where the driver plowed up sod too far off the road. Streets are swept in late April or May to remove sand and gravel left from winter maintenance. Each year a schedule of roads to be paved is published. Check the main Public Works page in the late spring for the  current year's schedule. The Town also published 5 year plans for gravel and paved road maintenance and repavement. Those can be found on our Town Plans page.

Contractors perform many maintenance services during the summer, including: painting road lines and other pavement markings, filling road cracks, mowing roadside grass and weeds, removing large trees, spreading liquid calcium chloride for dust control, and installing guardrail.

Roadside ditching is another important and common summer maintenance job. Ditching is important to protect the road bed, to keep water off of the road surface (and from icing in the winter) and to keep water flowing towards its ultimate destination.
 
Winter

In the winter, highway crews concentrate on keeping roadways clear and safe. For the winter season, the highway department has two people on duty at night to monitor road conditions. During any given storm there are nine trucks out on the road plowing. Crews are often working as early as 3 a.m. to make roads safe for morning travel. The department spreads around 2,000 tons of salt any given year. Ongoing work to keep the fire hydrants and bridges (Bridge Street - Snowbridge Road) clear is also necessary.