A press conference was held at Kennedy Park in Fall River, Massachusetts, on October 31, 2023, to highlight recent improvements and acquisitions for city departments. Mayor Paul Coogan announced the purchase of new street sweepers and a hot box machine, funded through ARPA money, which are intended to enhance city cleanliness, improve water quality by preventing debris from entering storm drains, and facilitate winter pothole repairs. The Mayor emphasized the importance of these additions for the Department of Community Utilities and the Department of Community Maintenance. Additionally, the Fall River Department of Emergency Services announced an expansion of its ambulance coverage. This includes bringing back 24-hour ambulance service to the Candace/Maplewood Park area with Medic 6, and adding a new 12-hour rescue truck for high-impact hours (6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.) operating from the center station. This expansion ensures all neighborhoods have 24/7 coverage, with the new 12-hour truck expected to be operational around November 13th. Speakers also detailed the cost of the new equipment, with two street sweepers costing $300,000 each, and a total ARPA allocation of $950,000 for these and an additional vacuum sweeper. Residents were encouraged to clean up leaves from their yards and gutters to support the city's efforts in maintaining water quality and preventing flooding.
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Council
Public Safety
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good morning it's nice to be down here at lovely Kennedy Park standing where I hope we have ice in a few months so kids can escape but right now we're here to talk about something much more important and I want to thank everyone for coming out to see the hard work that's going on in the city departments behind the scenes to make Fall River a better place to work and live with the employees that
0:20work for us in DCM EMS fire and police they're the glue that keeps the cities together and they've all done a tremendous job and I'm going to acknowledge all of them today the Department of Community utilities and the Department of Community maintenance are two very important assets to our city and we have exciting projects happening right now that will make a world of difference in the upkeep of our
0:43city we're going to talk about them just for a few minutes our new street sweepers which are behind us and the hot box machine which is over there paid for through arper money will be important additions to keeping the city clean and keeping debris out of the sewer and water drains the equipment also helps improve water quality in our pond streams River all feeding into the southw Tupper we also owe a huge thank
1:09you to the uh far Department of Emergency Services for the initiatives that they've been working on lately we're going to be bringing back our 24hour ambulance coverage to candas and they're helping to keep the residents safe in the South End and they're showing a great leadership and dedication to our residents by bringing this back online for everybody and as mayor I'm extremely proud of the city
1:30departments and the employees who continue to find new ways to improve Fall River daily today is an important day because it's a great way to acknowledge their work and dedication to the city and as you can see our new street sweepers and the HotBox machine is especially something I wanted to make sure we got a couple of out of the oper money because potholes in Fall River are are trouble all the time and when you
1:52throw a shovel full in in the winter it never takes but if you can use the hot box machine to cut a square and fill it with hot asphalt in the the middle of January it's definitely going to fix the um fix the hole at least to get us through the season and the street sweepers if I had my way they'd be out all day every day because our streets do
2:11need to have the litter picked up appropriately and the guys behind me all do a great job they keep the city clean they do the best they can and this new equipment is going to be an asset to them so I'd like to have Al Aliva come up and say a couple words about the new equipment for the uh City go ahead Al wing it good morning everyone uh i' like to
2:31thank mayor Coogan and uh for allowing us to have some funds to pick up some of this important equipment uh this is a vital uh part of the uh City's operation uh thank you everyone uh I going to have the uh the Brain Trust over here give you some specifics at this point thank you very much good morning everyone uh chief of EMS uh the department is expanding uh the rescue coverage for the 911 side of
3:01the city so with medic 6 going back to the candas uh the uh reason is that gives a Maplewood Park uh area neighborhood a 24-hour coverage but we're adding another rescue uh 7 days a week 12 hour shifts through the high impact hours which would be 6:30 a.m. to 6: p.m. that truck will take the place of medic 6 at the center station so we're a little compressed for space so it made sense to
3:30bring the 24-hour truck back to the neighborhood and have the 12-hour truck run with medic 4 out of the center so the center has 24-hour coverage so all neighborhoods have the 247 coverage with the impact truck running out of the middle of the city that truck should be up the week prior to Thanksgiving we've already have uh applicants and they're in the process of getting hired for that
3:53truck so around November 13th that truck will be up and running thank you excellent thank you everybody for coming out today first uh I wish it was the same weather we had this past Saturday today but I think fall is here um you know with that being said fall being here these Street sweep is going to be vital to uh helping out keep the city Clean Street sweep is most people think
4:21it's just out there to pick up the trash on the roadways and things like that that's not really what their point is one of their major points is to help clean up any sand debris leaves and stop that from getting into our storm water system that helps prevent all of that dirt and debris and phosphorus and nutrients running off down into the river or into our ponds and streams you know everybody here knows about the
4:46south wupa Pond the algae bloom issues that we have out there um a huge loading factor of that phosphorus the food that feeds into that is from the leaves that fall from the trees um as you can see around us all all here those leaves are starting to fall um so these street sweepers are going to be out there really helping pick up those leaves so that they don't make it in and become a
5:09food sauce to help th those algae blooms um one thing I would really like to say to Residents too uh seeing it is fall all the leaves are coming down just try to make sure that uh you clean up the leaves from your yard you don't blow them out into the street uh clean them up the city has the brown barrels available for pickup uh for of all you your leaves if you just blow them out
5:31into the street that's more that ends up into either the sewer or the storm water system also if you can help clean the gutters in front of your house the leaves from the gutters in front of your house or if there's a catch base in your house make sure that's clean so that the drainage system will work properly um and minimize flooding in areas so again these Street sweep is going to be key to
5:52help it this fall and many years going forward so um you know first of all I'd like to thank the these were paid uh these were paid by Opa funds too so I just want to point that out there both the hot boxes and the uh street sweepers um you know with the leadership team like we have in place with the mayor uh the city administrator City councilors uh our state reps Carol fola uh Alan Sylvia
6:17Paul Schmidt uh and then uh our Senator also Michael Rodricks uh it's great having that support team behind us to be able to get all things like this uh to be able to help the city of Fall River so thank you you thank you good morning uh I won't be long um I would like to touch briefly on the uh the hot box and infrared systems that were uh provided to us by the mayor in
6:46the OPA funding um like I said these are are essential especially during the winter months where in the summer pavement can be laid down the temperatures are normal but as we the temperatures dip as we all noticed today that um these machines are essential to repairing roads and improving roads and this is what uh we brought them here today like I said I won't say much but uh we have both the hot boxes and
7:15infrared and the sweepers we're going to have a full out demonstration so stick around anybody have any questions I do ma'am would you tell us please about funding and where it came from from maybe the grant process yeah as you know um one of the largest categories that we've used under um arpa has been water and sewer and um as Paul said by cleaning our streets it allows less runoff into both South southw Tupper our
7:46sewer systems so that's one of the reasons we focused on getting the street sweepers arpa also paid for the hot boxes because we want to try to keep our patches going all winter so it's mostly all ARA fund but uh the street sweepers were designated for water would you be able to tell us an um dollar amount you know what they are Paul yeah so these uh so these two street sweepers
8:10were um 300,000 a piece uh and then we also do have one more that's still on order a vacuum style these are broom style sweepers we also have a vacuum one uh that with that the city hasn't received yet that's also part of that Opa funding uh the total allocation was 950,000 could you address the $2 million for flooding that that's something we'll be talking that's something we'll be
8:37talking about the future press release Joe we'll tell you oh okay well it's it's out so so you're here I know I know all right yeah stay put it out too stay put so what are we waiting for okay not getting my answer okay so okay anybody have anything else okay thanks everybody thank you you know I do have for you