Five towns form equipment cooperative

Mass Innovations, From The Beacon, October 2012

Brookfield and four adjoining towns have formed an equipment-sharing cooperative that has created savings for the towns’ highway departments.

The cooperative, which also includes East Brookfield, West Brookfield, Brimfield and Warren, has helped the towns save on tasks such as keeping catch basins clear, repaving roads, and painting road-center lines. Last spring, the project received a $58,000 state innovation grant.

The arrangement among the five towns, all of which have populations between 2,100 and 5,200, grew out of an informal cooperation between Brookfield and East Brookfield. Brookfield arranged to use East Brookfield’s catch basin truck, and, in return, East Brookfield was free to borrow Brookfield’s highway mower.

As more neighboring towns expressed interest in sharing public works equipment, an intermunicipal agreement was established. The five towns also obtained a federal Homeland Security grant, which made possible compatible radio technology, according to Bill Scanlan, a grant administrator who discussed the project during a state-sponsored conference on regionalization in Worcester on Sept. 10.

The equipment is typically owned by Brookfield, the lead community in the cooperative, and lent out to the other towns. Outstanding balances are settled at the end of each fiscal year. The system is simple enough that costs, credits, federal reimbursements and other data can be tracked on a single Excel spreadsheet, according to Scanlan.

He said that if the cooperative wanted to jointly purchase a new road grader, for example, it would be necessary for each town to approve the purchase. The share for each town would be roughly $20,000 – one fifth the estimated cost of the machine.

Brookfield Highway Superintendent Herb Chaffee, who also spoke at the regionalization conference, cited a number of instances in which the cooperative has helped all five towns save money.

One example involved a directive from the Federal Highway Administration that reflective road signs be in lower-case letters, rather than the previous all-capitals style. Research had indicated that the lower-case signs are more legible at night and might reduce the frequency of accidents, particularly among older drivers.

Because some lower-case letters, such as p and y, extend below the other letters, however, the new signs had to be broader. To minimize the costs of producing the signs, the cooperative purchased a sign-making plotter. Three employees, two from Brookfield and one from West Brookfield, were trained to use the machine, according to Cindy Thompson, the Brookfield Highway Department’s administrative assistant. Thompson said making signs with the plotter is 44 percent less expensive than buying pre-made signs.

Other projects that have led to cost savings included hiring a single contractor to repaint road-center lines in all five communities, Thompson said.

She lauded the work of the highway superintendents in the five towns in developing the cooperative.

“This wasn’t from the top down,” Thompson said. “It was the superintendents who came and said, ‘We can save the towns some money.’”

For more information, contact Cindy Thompson at (508) 867-8357.