Lanesborough Sorting Out Who's on Roadkill Duty
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — A deer died naturally but was laying on the side of Ore Bed Road. It was bloated and "ready to explode."
Sources haven't confirmed the actual conversation but iBerkshires can imagine it went something like this:
"I'm not touching it," said the fictional highway worker. "Call the animal control officer."
"I don't have the equipment to pick that up," the fictional ACO responded. "You do it."
Neither of the contracts with those department workers includes picking up dead animals but is work that needs to be done.
"The highway doesn't want it and the police don't want it," Town Manager Kelli Robbins said on Monday night after hearing input from both departments.
Police Chief Timothy Sorrell said his department doesn't have the equipment. The animal control officer vehicle is no longer on the road, leaving just cruisers for a dead animal to be transported -- the same cruiser in which a criminal suspect could be sitting in shortly afterward. Further, Sorrell said the department only has the shovel it uses to clear the sidewalk.
"It makes more sense for the Highway Department to do it," said Selectman Robert Ericson, citing the array of equipment the department has at its disposal.
When there is a car accident in which a deer is killed, officers will move it to the side of the road and the Highway Department can pick it up in the morning, Sorrell said. But the police don't want to have to transport the animal to Covanta in Pittsfield, where the town has a contract with for disposal.
"In most towns, police have nothing to do with roadkill and neither does the ACO," Robbins said.
But for the Highway Department, Director William Decelles told Selectman Henry Sayers that his workers are not vaccinated for rabies. He doesn't want his employees subjected to a possible health risk. The animal control officer is, however, vaccinated.
Robbins said rabies is typically a non-issue with dead animals that have been there for a period of time, and that there is no way of knowing how long an animal has been dead and what diseases it might be carrying.
"They don't want to get the shots, they don't want to be exposed to that health risk," she said.
Sayers said the police could do it by simply attaching a trailer to a cruiser when it goes to pick it up. And then Sayer's phone buzzed with a text from Decelles offering to let the officers borrow the Highway Department's pickup truck for the task.
Sayers added that the Highway Department has also been asked to chip in on a lot of other aspects -- on Monday the board asked the department to send a guy to help renovate the police station. That person will preferably be one of the emergency medical technicians the town hired so he would be easily available to handle an ambulance call as well.
Sayers said there has been enough put on the Highway Department's plate.
The highway union's contract reads that if someone has to get called in off-hours, it requires two people for a minimum of four hours while the Police Department call-ins are for only three hours. Then again, police are paid more and thus the numbers are closer.
Animal Control Officer Jason Costa is only considered part time because he also works as a traditional officer as well. When Costa was out of town on vacation recently, a raccoon was hit on the Connector Road and sat there for days.
Sorrell said it would be more inexpensive to have a Highway Department worker pick it up during the day rather than calling in Costa.
"If it is a Monday through Friday during Highway Department hours, it is much cheaper to have them pick it up instead of calling in the ACO," Sorrell said.
So there is a standoff. Nobody wants to do it and nobody has to do it.
Chairman John Goerlach said for now he'd like to at least have an understanding that the Highway Department will fill in if Costa isn't available to move an animal out of a roadway but when union negotiations come up, that responsibility will have to go somewhere and town officials will now have to figure out who is in charge.
Tags: debris/junk,
