Fall Street Sweep Cancelled Due to Lack of Funding

The following is a message from Department of Public Works Commissioner John Buckley:

As we all know, the overall economic conditions throughout the United States of America and more specifically, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have remained suppressed. While the longer term economic outlook is cautiously optimistic, the near term projections do not offer any relief. As a result, all municipal services and operations budgets throughout the Commonwealth have been negatively impacted. In turn we, in the City of Medford, have strained resources and severely compressed operating budgets for all municipal services. To meet the challenges presented by the economic downturn, we in the Department of Public Works have endeavored to trim our maintenance operations, re-organize/re-structure the various departments and have implemented “working” smarter techniques throughout the DPW. However, despite these actions, the lack of funds translates to reduced services in selected areas.

To this end, the Fall Street Sweep for 2009 is cancelled. The extensive effort put forth in prior years was made possible by sufficient resources to meet this city wide effort. However, we will continue to perform our regular posted street sweeping operations and the curbside leaf pick up by Waste Management will be done as scheduled. As always, we encourage all residents not to sweep the leaves into the gutter and to place the leaves in approved environmental paper leaf bags or open barrels for proper recycling purposes.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

John J. Buckley