Public works have continued to strive to improve the services we provide for the community.
Discussion have begun regarding our courier/maintenance and we are considering abolishing the courier function and posting up a position for just maintenance of the buildings. Hiring someone to carry out just the maintenance of the building will be a wise move, considering our buildings are getting older. We will be assessing the need to hire an additional person for our new facilities to see if we should hire a new janitor. In our district heating department we had some issues with an aging district heating system, and we sincerely hope that the community will invest some significant money in improving the operation of the department. Once again our oil boilers were running more than we wanted as we continue to try and improve the system. However, we require the community to invest considerable amounts to improve the system. Our system is over 23 years old and we can invest into the system, to modernize the system. Once again, we had a lot of snow this year. In addition we continue to evolve as to our duties regarding the service that we provide to the community. Although we met our responsibilities quite well, I think, we had to hire additional people to assist in an attempt to minimize our overtime.
Landfill operations are starting to cause a problem where we have no one at the gate to control the traffic and since the last two-three years, since Chibougamau charges for dumping fees, the citizens from both Chibougamau and Chapais have come and dumped their garbage at our landfill, at no cost, to save them selves some money. This will shorten the life of our landfill, and puts a serious risk of the community being fined for contaminants, which is realistic, because we are finding all kinds of fuels and chemicals. We strongly recommend that we look at hiring someone at the gate full-time to control what comes into our landfill, and we start looking at applying dumping fees as well. In the water and sewer department, the lift station was completed and we are having a small problem with the lift station. However, we are able to keep up with the maintenance of the new lift station. We at the Public Works Department have identified a deficiency in the construction of the lift station, and this deficiency is yet to be remedied. However, we are hoping that it will be remedied in the coming weeks. We continue to serve the community to the best of our abilities and hope that people are satisfied with the service we provide to the community.
