Ken Parker Seeks to Save Taxpayers Millions in Repair Costs

The April 29th Newton TAB highlights Alderman Ken Parker's leadership on the issue of maintenance of our public buildings, which has suffered under the Cohen Administration.  

 From the article:

Newton - Newton’s lack of a documented preventive maintenance program for city buildings has one alderman worried the city is squandering money on expensive repairs that could be avoided.

“It’s a matter of having a documented program that is followed,” Alderman Ken Parker said. “It’s not a matter of throwing money at the problem. The practical consequence is that we spend far more on repair and replacement than we need to because we don’t have a strong program.”

According to the meeting minutes for an April 9 Programs and Services committee hearing, Nick Parnell, Commissioner of the Public Buildings, attributed the city’s poor maintenance to an underfunded budget that doesn’t allow him to perform as many checks as he would like.

“Basically, unless something was broken, it did not get attended to,” Parnell inferred from the meeting minutes.

“Unfortunately, there really is no comprehensive preventative maintenance program in place to cover all of our school and public buildings,” mayoral spokesman Jeremy Solomon said. “We essentially take care of the necessary improvements as they come up.”

With infrastructure deterioration fast becoming an urgent statewide and national issue, it's not hard to understand the need for a well-thought-out comprehensive preventative maintenance program.  As we in Newton can certainly appreciate, it would save taxpayers millions of dollars.

~Shawn