Westlake Service Director Don Glauner overlooks the city’s new service garage located on Bassett Road. Tours of the facility will be offered Saturday afternoon. (Photo by Kevin Kelley)

Residents invited to tour new service garage
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published Sept. 6, 2006

Map of 741 Bassett Rd Westlake, OH 44145-1104

It takes a lot of work to run a city the size of Westlake — work that often goes unnoticed by residents. This Saturday, the city is inviting citizens to take a behind-the-scenes look at the people and equipment that keep the city running smoothly during an open house at the newly built service garage at 741 Bassett Road from 1 to 5 p.m.

A ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 1:30 p.m. Former city service directors and employees are expected to attend, said Service Director Don Glauner.

For Dennis Clough, who has served as mayor since 1986, the grand opening of the service garage represents a milestone in the modernization of the once rural suburb.

“This is the last municipal building that I know of that has to be built,” said Clough, who during his tenure has overseen construction of a new City Hall building and new recreation center.

The mayor said the $6.7 million project was 20 years in the making. A new service garage was in Clough’s initial five-year plan when he took office. But other projects took priority at the time.

Built on the site of the former service garage, the 67,500-square-foot facility will house the service department’s administrative offices as well as locker rooms for department employees and a shop for producing street signs. A 52,700-square-foot indoor garage, which resembles an aircraft hanger, will house the service department’s 50 vehicles — everything from back hoes and dump trucks to tree trucks and street sweepers.

“The bottom line is the whole facility was built to allow us to provide even better services to our residents and give us the ability to expand more effectively,” Clough said.

The service department began moving into the new facility July 26.

Before the new building became operational, the service department only went to 24-hour operation sduring snowstorms. “Now we’ll always have someone at this facility — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — just like police and fire,” the mayor said.

Clough and Glauner believe the new garage will increase efficiency and improve communications among city workers. Because all service department vehicles can now be housed indoors during inclement weather, they project the better-protected equipment will last longer.

“When we talk about savings to the residents, instead of setting up a plan for a truck (lasting) five to eight years, we could possibly be looking at eight to 10 years because  we’ll be able to keep them longer,” said Glauner, who has been service director since August 2002.

The building can also serve as an emergency disaster center for events such as a mass inoculation, Glauner said. An onsite generator would allow the facility to serve as a back-up command center in an emergency if City Hall were not available, he added.

On site are gas pumps to fill up all city vehicles, including those from police and fire departments. Under an agreement with the Westlake City Schools, school buses will also fill up at the site; the school district pays for the gas while the city handles the ordering and other administrative concerns.

What might surprise some people is how many types of work are done in house by the service department. Four mechanics are on staff to perform nearly all maintenance work on city vehicles. All street signs as well as nylon banners hung from telephone poles to promote events such as the recent Celebrate Westlake race are also made by the service department.

But wait. Don’t Republican-led governments usually believe it’s more efficient to outsource as many government services to the private sector as possible?

Clough said some services are best outsourced; the city contracted with a private company to collect trash a couple of years ago. But other services should be done in-house if an economic cost analysis proves it will be more efficient, the Republican mayor said.

Clough is “an accountant first, a mayor second, and a Republican third,” Glauner said.

Beyond the new facility is a large field where collected leaves and brush are chopped up and left to decompose for a year before being mixed with humus to create topsoil or mulch.

“Just about everything we do involves recycling to some extent,” said Glauner, who added he hopes residents will come to the open house Saturday to see how their tax money gets used.