From the Board of Commissioners 

Its springtime once again, and along with warm spring showers comes …lawn mowing. We feel your pain! But what if …you had to mow 140 acres of disparate plots of grass dispersed over 7.1 square miles. This is just one of the springtime chores that face the Public Works Department in our Township. Let’s see, there’s “park clean up, mulching, painting, street cleaning, pothole patching of some 58 miles of roadway, and sign replacement.” Ah, no problem we’ll just fit it in between trash collection, recycling, equipment maintenance and vehicle repair. 

The Public Works Department the second largest Township department in terms of both number of employees and budget magnitude. They are second only to the Police Department in both categories, and the scope of their responsibility is vast and diverse! 

“Winter is  our slow season being  generally dedicated to vehicle and equipment maintenance, almost all of which is done by the Department itself,” said Russ Palmore, head of the Public Works Department. Of course, he modestly fails to mention, those maintenance tasks are being conducted amid a variety of other activities like snow removal, trash collection, recycling, sign replacement, and whatever pothole patching the weather will permit during that same time period. 

Just walking around the Township’s ‘maintenance yard,’ one can see that things don’t just happen in Public

Works! It takes enormous effort each and every day. The massive ‘honey do’ list that represents the tasks to be accomplished expands and contracts as it passes through the seasons. All the items on this list require planning and considerable effort. Intelligent material acquisition, management skills, leadership, tactical planning and implementation skills plus a broad scope of maintenance knowledge are prerequisites to operating this department. But even the best-laid plans can’t out guess Mother Nature a hundred percent of the time. 

 “This winter was especially bad for snow removal. The ice content of a major snow fall in March was a major issue requiring significant effort,” Palmore said apologetically, “but everything is back on target.”

Street Sweep’n Wizard

As sign replacement, pothole repairs and street sweeping wind down, the mowing, park rehab, recycling and trash collection take center stage. The frequency of trash collection doubles around the first of May and that frequency continues until the end of September. “This 22 week acceleration provides the collection services as it is needed in the warmer months when people are more active.”

At the end of the summer months, when the mowing activities dwindle and the trash schedule returns to a ‘cool weather’ pace, leaf collection becomes the focal point of the department. The Township leaf collection program delivers leaves to the Delaware County Solid Waste Transfer Station, where they, as part of an overall  ‘leaf recycling’ program, use the leaves to create compost. After the end of the composting process, the compost is available to participating Townships for use. In Aston, the compost is made available to Township residents for their personal use at no cost.

The leaf collection program extends into December when vehicle repair and equipment maintenance slowly regain focus.

Compost-Mulch Pick Up is free for Aston residents

Not all activities are seasonal, some programs continue all year long.

Newspaper collection is a year round part of the Township’s recycling program conducted by Public Works. Newspapers are collected for one week every month and sold to Delaware County Solid Waste to cover some of the cost of collection. Bulk trash collection is also a year round program – collecting oversized items including appliances. Notice and

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