Somerville staff outline DPW/firehouse maintenance roles; council requests ticket data for follow-up

Somerville City staff summarized on June 9 a joint DPW and fire department memo describing how maintenance of fire facilities is handled and how the city tracks work requests.

The memo presented to the Public Health and Public Safety Committee lists DPW responsibilities for general building maintenance — such as flooring, sheetrock repairs and other trades work — and describes how fire department staff, who are on site 24/7, identify problems and route them through the city’s 3-1-1 work-order system for DPW response.

Councilor Scott said he shared firefighters’ long-standing concerns about conditions in some stations and asked whether the city could report the number of 3-1-1 tickets and turnaround times for recent years. DPW staff said a record exists for 3-1-1 tickets and that they could pull a report showing tickets and closure timestamps; they cautioned that ticket close times may not capture the full remedial timeline for some repairs and offered to work with the councilor offline to determine the most useful metrics.

The committee closed the item with staff offering to gather data on 3-1-1 ticket volumes and durations if the council wants a deeper review; no formal action was taken at the meeting.