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Public Works director outlines rising sinkholes, aging fleet and plans for a new garage
Summary
Public Works Director Andrew Haymon told council the department is seeing a rise in sinkholes and dump sites, described gaps in historical data, and highlighted new equipment and an upcoming seven-bay public works garage and three plow trucks funded by grants.
Public Works Director Andrew Haymon told the Chester City Council on March 11 that the department is stretched across a wide set of routine services and seasonal demands, and he outlined several near-term investments intended to improve response and maintenance capacity.
Haymon said snow plowing, pothole repairs, sign replacement and removal of illegal dump sites are core duties. ‘‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure,’’ he told the council, explaining the department has only recently consolidated records that allow year-to-year comparisons. He cited comparative figures: roughly 1,700 signs installed in 2024 (including about 920 paid with ARPA funds), sinkhole reports that rose from 45 in 2024 to 58 in 2025 (and about a dozen reported early in 2026 at the time of the presentation), and dump-site removals that the city estimates were about 600 in 2024 and roughly 300 in 2025.
Haymon detailed materials and fleet usage: 338 tons of road salt in 2024, more than 900 tons in 2025 and roughly 650 tons recorded so far in 2026. He said the department maintains approximately 99 miles of roadway (about 81 miles are city roads) and oversees a fluctuating fleet of about 117 vehicles.
On equipment, Haymon highlighted several acquisitions: a bucket truck delivered last November (the city had not owned one in roughly two decades), a new heavy front-end loader purchased in 2024, and three plow-capable trucks on order through a Local Share Account (LSA) grant to improve access to narrow residential streets. He also said three electric vehicles purchased via an earlier grant (including an electric trash truck) are due to arrive around the time a new public works garage opens later this year.
The planned public works garage, he said, will have seven bays, a lift for in-house maintenance, three EV chargers and a 400-ton salt shed designed to reduce weather-related salt contamination and support the department’s needs well beyond the immediate term. Haymon said the new facility should allow the city to perform more maintenance in-house and reduce out-of-service time for vehicles.
Council members praised staff work and the mayor reminded the public that part of the recent vehicle purchases came from an LSA grant of roughly $800,000 for fleet modernization.
What happens next: staff will continue implementing the new equipment and garage project; procurement and grant reporting obligations remain and the department indicated it would post more data publicly as a dashboard to improve transparency.
