By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — All the large equipment of the Caribou Public Works Department will be on display during the Open House on Tuesday, Sept. 10 and folks from the greater Caribou area are more than welcome to visit the facility for a tour.
“We wanted to take an opportunity this time of year, when [the public works department] is in-between plowing and their summer projects, to give people a chance to come down and see what they do,” said Assistant City Manager Tony Mazzucco. “If you look at the size of the staff, the size of our budget and what they’re able to do — it’s pretty incredible.”
Some of the equipment on display will be the city’s “new” snow hauler — with “new” being a drastically relative term.
Mazzucco explained that this summer, the Public Works Department was able to obtain the new-to-Caribou snow haulers for the city at a very affordable price — and was able to utilize in-house skills to extend the frames of the snow haulers to accommodate parts of the existing equipment.
“Public Works has been able to get a lot of equipment very cheap, fix it up and put it to use for the city with enormous cost savings,” Mazzucco said.
Public Works employees’ abilities impact Caribou’s bottom line as a whole, spreading out the cost savings by maintaining the vehicles of other departments, like police as well as fire and ambulance.
While the Open House will provide an opportunity for the public to see the facility, the efforts of the department are seen every day through Caribou’s roads and infrastructure.
“We all know how snow-filled the winters are up here; with such difficult winters and the amount of plowing that has to go on, the fact that we’re able to keep the roads in such good condition is really a miracle,” Mazzucco said, praising the efforts of the department and its employees.
The Open House will be held from 2:30-4:30 on Tuesday, Sept. 10, and all are welcome to attend.
