Board of Public Works Meeting July 29, 2026

Town of Dartmouth meeting uh Wednesday, July 29th, 2026.

Uh we'll have uh a roll call. Uh Mr.

Lavel.

Yes.

Present.

Uh the chair is present. We have a quorum. Uh this meeting is being held in person. It is being recorded. Uh our order of business today is interviews for the board of public works members. Uh the for anyone watching this, the town has through town meeting and an election changed the charter to increase the number of public works board members from three to five.

Uh our interview today is with Mr.

Addison Greenlaw. Mr. Green Law, welcome.

Thank you.

Um Ron, we have we have a series of questions that we're asking uh all of the applicants. Um but mostly this is an informal discussion to um get for us to get to know you and for you to ask any questions regarding the Board of Public Works and what we do. Ron, can I kick it off?

Sure. Mr. Green law, would you please tell us about yourself and your background?

Okay. About myself, uh, I am a 41-year resident here of Dartmouth. Uh, my wife is a Dartmouth girl born and raised. Uh, my kids all grew up here, went to Dartmouth schools.

um live in the same house that I have for the whole 41 years.

Uh my background is I went to work for DW White Construction in 1982.

I worked for them for 13 years as a allar around I I estimated my own work.

I managed my own work and I supervised my own work. U I'm sure you're familiar with DW White. It was not the same company it is today. It's grown a lot, but uh we built a lot of subdivisions.

Uh built a lot of cranberry bogs.

Um also um I was personally uh bid, managed, and supervised um the first 22 acre cell of the town's regional landfill at Crapo Hill. Um, and also actually did the first phase of closing and capping the Dartmouth landfill. Uh, I had other places I had to go, but I did get all the gas extraction wells and the gas trenches in because that was a critical part of the job because the neighbors all had gas monitors in

their basement.

So, it was uh kind of a critical nature.

And then I moved from there. But uh you know we did reconstruction of roadways. We built new subdivision roads. So water, sewer, drain, underground utilities, soup to nuts, paving, uh just overseeing that whole process, the uh the things that public works boards do.

Uh after 13 years there, I had an opportunity to go to work for Arzopo Corp.

an old Boston area firm. Uh in Stoton, u they are this year 101 years old.

They've been around a long time. Uh and have performed work down here in the area.

Um, we did quite a good amount of work for uh the New Bedford Infrastructure Department, uh including cleaning out the whole sewer interceptor and disposing of all the PCB waste that were in it. Um we cleaned the long outfall and put it back in service for the sewage treatment plant.

Uh so we've had some experiences there. My experience with Zapo the company where I was for 25 years where I became went up through the ranks and became vice president of the company. Um, we did all kinds of work that no one else wanted to do, which made it very interesting. Um, it's less competition, it's more fun, it's more challenging.

Um, we did work on the central lottery project.

Um, we did a lot of work at the Deer Island treatment facility.

kind of under the radar. There were all kinds of separate contracts to build that facility and there were gigantic gaps in the contract scopes.

I think there were either four or five contracts let out to fill those gaps and we did all of them and that amounted to well over hund00 million worth of work. I one of them alone was $38 million bucks just to clean up scopes and get everything. So we hit on just about every process that was included in the treatment facility out there. Uh it was great learning experience for all of us.

We did things I guess that hadn't been done before. Um we we did a lot of work in the tunnels in the central lottery after the fact. We fixed more stuff in those tunnels. Then uh we replaced all the drainage pumping systems in the whole tunnel. Of course, all this work is done at night between the hours of 9 and 5 and be off the road and out of the way. Uh lots of traffic control which

we all became very familiar with. Um, we did uh a project for that was for Mass DOT but in district 6. We also did a project a number of projects for district 4, but one of them was Route 93 from the Zikum Bridge north.

I don't know if you recall they had problems with bridge decks. one collapsed on them. Uh, and they went in and replaced seven bridges on weekends.

After that, we got a contract to do the two miles from where they had the problems back to the Zikum Bridge and we did deck repairs at night.

Um, so we had to go out, remove the con, remove the asphalt, remove the concrete, expose the rebar or do full depth excavation and return the roadway to service by rapid setting concrete, asphalt, everything 5:00 in the morning, start at 9 at night, you got to be done by 5 in the morning. We got our productions up to eight or 10 yards a night.

Uh, and we in the overall with the contract, we did 4,200 yards of deck concrete replacement.

The uh the contract went from 10,500,000 to 29 million.

I had a lot of meetings with the federal highway explaining why why those cars went where they did, but they they were good meetings and they understood and we they kept funding it.

So, it was a good project for us, good project, I think, for uh for Massd.

Uh, I had the opportunity to rebuild some of the more historic bridges in uh in Massachusetts, including the oldest span across the Mystic River, the Kratic Bridge right in Medford Square, originally built in 1638.

Um, also had the opportunity to rebuild uh the Flint's Bridge which is in conquered right next to where the first shots were fired. It's a stone arch was was a drylaid stone arch bridge and we knitted it all back together with long stainless steel rods and grout and uh it's put it back into uh H20 loading capabilities and uh always enjoyed working on stuff with with you know real historic

meaning. It it there's a little bit more pleasure in that kind of stuff.

Uh the experiences were we did railroad stuff. We been working and I still do a little consulting with them on a program right now uh rehabilitating uh Providence Waters 102 in aqueduct.

Um, I don't know if any of you recall, but back in 1996, they had a catastrophic failure at the lowest point in the aqueduct, and it they were rescuing people out of some of the high-rise buildings around there with boats on the second floor.

It was a lot of water.

Lot of water. 102 in pipe with uh I think 182 ft ahead.

It's about 80 PSI.

So it was a mess.

So we've been they instituted a program to find because it was all the old wire wound concrete pipe and there were a lot of failures in that back in the 60s and 70s. that they didn't have good corrosion protection and the wires kept breaking and then they would fail. Uh so we've been doing a program with them uh rehabilitating it by slip lining like we did with the sewer here only with pressure pipe

a little bit different but slip lining and grouting. Um, and every year or every two years they go in the pipe and identify the areas that are in most need of repair and usually go in and and it's really expensive. So, sometimes it's only two or three thousand feet at a time. It's a lot of money. But they have an AFO cable that runs in the aqueduct.

They know where all the brakes occur.

They can hear them through the It's an acoustical fiber optic cable that they run down on the invert of the pipe and they know the exact location. They know the pipe number that they're hearing wire brakes in, so they know where the issues are.

There's a ton more things that I I I won't bore you anymore. There's a ton more things that I got to do working for Zapo uh that just interesting uh different uh much more challenging. Um really had an opportunity to do a lot of great things and uh was a lot of fun.

The the public works department has a wide range of work that they do as you know and they have a professional staff and the board is generally an overseeing and policymaking body. Um, how do you see the relationship between board members and public works professional staff?

Well, not knowing how the exactly how the system works right now, but I I would say that the public works staff needs direction as to where their focuses should be and I would anticipate that the board provides that kind of focus.

So that everybody has the ability to decide what what are the needs and what are the most important needs by a public works in in the town and those get transmitted to the public works department and uh I'm assuming with the help of the board members they start to tackle those things. Uh, oh, and perhaps I forgot to mention, I should throw in um I actually did four two-year contracts for Mass DO

that the name of the contracts were maintenance of state highways and it was a section of 128 from Brainree up to Totten Pond Road and all the state highway branches.

So, we did all the sweeping, all the grass mowing, all the catch basin cleaning, all the roadway repair work, um basically a lot of the duties that the public works department is responsible for here in town. So, uh, that was one of the projects that I ran and that went for eight years and, uh, they finally phased out the whole, you know, for a while, oh, we're we're going to go public contracting rather

than because they did it in-house and then they decided to go out and bring the public in and it's kind of gone g gone back the other way now. But for the time uh we we managed that very busy section of road for eight years pretty successfully too I might add. Um but yeah I I I think that it's important that I think the direction of the department

is is should come from the board. I I I always assumed that was the case.

Transparency for me is exactly what the word says. Everything is out in the open. Uh the my philosophy is if you're asked a question, you tell the truth.

You never lie about anything. You never try and cover up anything.

It's wide open. That's the only way that you can get people to trust you.

uh you have to develop a great deal of trust when because you're going to talk to people about spending a ton of their money and if they can't trust you then they're going to question why they should fork over the dough.

I I everything should be wide open like I I'm happy to see all the the open meeting rules that really have now it sounds like the new town administrator is really very big on that stuff and I and I'm happy to see that because that means everybody knows if they're willing to look what's going on and that that to me is what transparency means. That's and it's very important.

Uh where I worked for Zapo, anyone who uh tried to hide anything or not tell the truth about mistakes, what whatever you did, uh you were no longer employed there.

You got one shot at it.

That's it. Goodbye. And I So, we had a lot of clients who trusted us and and gave us opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

So, it's important for the success of the company. It's important for the people you're working for. And in this case, the residents of the town of Darmouth, they need to be able to trust what they're being told.

In in a world where public agencies, particularly cities and towns are making do with much smaller budgets than perhaps they wish.

How do you see the public works department trying to set its priorities?

the what let me put it a little differently. What is the relationship between the public works department and um the select board and other town departments?

How does that work? Do you think?

Well, I think it should be that that public works should perhaps through the board inform the other departments in the town of what is considered by the public works department to be the most critical things that need to be addressed. Now, I think if I'm not mistaken, you do use uh software for your paving program.

So, you have scheduled and I think that's critical. So, you've looked at roads, you've looked at their conditions, you've looked at the amount of traffic that's on each of those roads, and you prioritize what needs to be milled and paved next or what needs to have uh crack sealing done next or I think that's the kind of thing because every it's the most obvious est thing for the people in town is the condition

of the surface of the road. No matter what you do, it it's that's where you're going to get the most negative feedback if it's not right.

Potholes.

Exactly.

Yeah. Fixing the damn potholes.

Pardon me.

Um, so I and I don't know if you have other programs like that that are um associated with the drainage system in town with the water system in town and you know that is being prioritized in the in the same way. I hope it is. It certainly I think should be um and yeah I know you have budgets you you try to do best you can with the budget you have

and and as long as you have a good list of priorities and everybody knows what they are. uh then you do your best to keep knocking away at the list so that uh things don't get out of hand because I I if you're not prioritizing then you're going to lose sight of what you're doing and there's some things that should have been cared for that aren't and they're

going to go bad on you're going to get a lot of bad feedback.

Right.

What do you see as the largest challenges facing the town now? Water, sewer roads public work operations. What do you see as the biggest challenges for me? I I I know that sewer is a huge challenge. That's going to be a lot of money for the town and it's going to be difficult for the public to swallow uh when they see what the bill is going to be. I I I know that you're probably

going to get grants that are going to help, but uh somewhere along the line, the taxpayers are going to have to come up with what's required to bring the system up so that meets new regulations.

you and and also the volume that's being added to the town here. I would say that's number one. Uh number two certainly I the discussion has been you know it would be better if the town of Dartmouth didn't have to buy water.

Uh I don't know if that's feasible. I I I don't know how many studies have been done where they think water is available.

Uh and by the way, just from my own observation, I think I'm I'm almost sure we need a new sewage treatment plant. I can't see rehabbing what's there and adding what's necessary and actually get that's my own feeling.

But I've seen it enough times where once Ty and Bond gets going on this I to me I don't think it's feasible to do anything but build a new facility.

Um, that's an opinion, but I've seen it enough times to know that, you know, that's an old plan. I it and there are new technologies and new equipment and stuff that's just not going to fit what's there. And I the town would be better off anyway to start with something where you know you have whatever life cycle you design whether it's 25 years 50 years or whatever the life cycle design is

that helps you plan that helps you understand what your future costs are going to be.

If you take some old infrastructure and try to fix it, that there's going to be a whole different program that's going to be more expensive on an annual basis than what a new plant is going to cost to run. I uh water I I think it would be great if there's an exploration program going on and and Rob I think from your background uh you probably know more about the geology

around here than anybody. I don't know if there's that kind of water available here in town or or if it is just continue buying water from New Bedford or building our own del, which might be way too far-fetched, but we did build one up on the Taton River.

Don't even remind me of that.

Do you have any questions of us?

Uh, off the top of my head, I would not I think I I understand what the purpose of the public works board is. I uh I know, you know, my background has always been building things. Uh but in order for our company to build things, it had to have come from things like the Board of Public Works to decide what infrastructure needs to be improved. What do we need to do to keep

the standards up in the town that the taxpayers expect?

uh and all of those reports that need to be generated and the grants that need need to be applied for. All I had to do was read about those.

They were part of our bid documents. I needed to know what the genesis of all of these things were. So I will admit my background is certainly I read them uh really never had any part in in producing them. Uh but I do understand them. Um, and you know, I I I would like to add I think being allowed to do kind of different things that were maybe a little scary to people.

uh allowed me to develop things like we did a a job for the National Park Service.

We did the job. It was a the Charlestown Navyyard.

Their water system was over too oversized. It used to be a very active Navyyard. their entire water distribution system was way oversized and they were getting a lot of stagnation in their system.

So they wanted to put in a new system and the job was bid as an entirely open cut job about 7,000 ft of waterland.

Um all to be done while the park is active.

Well, we were successful as low bidder and about three weeks later because we had already put it together, uh, we offered a offered them a VECP program to change the entire installation to trenchless.

We use three different kinds of trenchless technologies.

uh slip lining, uh horizontal directional drilling, uh whatever fit a certain portion of the park and we were able to do it all with pits and all the pedestrians came and went and we kept it so like we didn't interfere with the parks operation or the Navy's operation.

at really at all.

uh which made the National Park Service really happy and made my boss really happy because the ve was worth an $800,000 deduction to the National Park Service of which they gave us 55% right off the All we did was come up with some better ideas and a little planning and they wrote us a check for 55% of the savings.

So innovation I I I'm sure that there are certain things where those kinds of innovative thinking possibilities would help. uh reduce costs, allow you to get more bang for your buck. Um and that's the for me that was always those kinds of things because I did a number of them working with the military and some with the with the mass highway department.

Uh that was the most fun part of the job figuring out how to do it better.

Mhm.

And make money doing it. Any other questions, Ron?

No, sir.

Do you have any any more questions of us?

Uh I think one of the things that would be helpful for me to know in case you decide that I'm a viable candidate what kind of time is required of the position.

I can give you my perception.

Um, I you told me you retired and are working full-time now, so you were paying attention. I tried. The um the board meets normally meets once a month uh early in the morning and we have for the last several years been meeting by Zoom. Um there are arguments for and against Zoom meetings, for and against in-person meetings. Um, depending on the agenda and the agenda materials, there's a fair amount of

reading and questions that are asked, background questions um particularly around um large projects and or around budget time when the budgets are putting being put together and there's a lot of um lot of information to be looked at. But my sense is that a lot of things that we are doing can be anticipated.

And so if you keep up with your homework, it isn't so bad.

Sure.

It's um if if you don't practice your clarinet for three or four days in a row, you got a long practice session.

No understood.

Ron, what do you have?

No, I I think you've said it well. I mean, you know, there's there's reading you got to you need to get done. There's, you know, times I go to the office and talk to Tim what's happening. I mean, I've been a little behind the past couple of months. Um Um But it's not like an overwhelming thing. It's not like you're at work.

No, no. I'm not putting in 17-hour days anymore.

Oh, come on.

And and I do other things in retirement than than this to keep me busy.

Well, I do as well. That's kind of why I was wanting to understand like I said I I'm still doing some consulting with Zapo for basically for the Providence Waterwork because I actually I was the one that came up with the uh the methods.

We had had a lot of practice with sewer, but it's gravity and it's altogether different thing when you start dealing with uh pressure pipes that go 600 ft under Route 295 where you don't want to have any any bad issues and things like that.

No mistakes there.

But it, you know, but that's it's certainly not anything. It's not even part-time. It's when they when they need it. And I enjoy that. And I I you know, if I'm going to be a member of the board, I'll sink myself into it. I it's the only way I I it's the only way I know how to do things is have to participate at the level that's necessary to understand the work and produce

what you need to.

So do you have Yeah. You don't have any issues with meeting either remote via Zoom or or in person? No, I can just go sit in my office downstairs and do I I I will say that and and Zoom is is nice because it allows people a little more leeway but face-to-face meetings, especially depending on the topic, I find are critical. I can't read you on the screen the way I can

when I look at you across the table. And I just find that with with everyone. And I also think that putting people together in a room, and it doesn't have to be all the time, but once in a while maintains a connection that you can't get on a screen. just simply can't. Uh but if you have the connection, yeah, you can put it all up on the screen and you discuss things and then maybe you

decide, well, you know, this needs a little more insight or more discussion and maybe we ought to get together and talk about it.

Okay, I think if you've got no more questions or and we don't um thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for uh especially today.

I I appreciate you making your way here.

I I makes a difference for me.

Again, I apologize for being late.

It happens.

All right. Motion to adjurnn.

Motion is seconded. Um Mr. Leel, yes.

Chair votes yes. The meeting is adjourned.