~ The Advocate Asks ~

Saugus Solid Waste & Recycling Director Scott Brazis talks about the challenges of his first 20 months on the job

 

  Editor’s Note: For this week’s column, we sat down with Scott A. Brazis, the town’s director of Solid Waste & Recycling, to learn about the improvements he’s made and the challenges he faced since he began the job on Oct. 31, 2022. Brazis, a Saugus native, will turn 63 in July. He is a 1979 graduate of Saugus High School. Brazis was a standout hockey player for the Sachems, playing well enough to be inducted into the Saugus High School Sports Hall of Fame in 1996. He was an assistant hockey coach at Saugus High for two years followed by seven years as the head coach. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice Forensics from the University of New Haven, where he also starred on the hockey team and was later inducted into the university’s sports Hall of Fame. Brazis earned his Master’s in Criminal Justice Administration from Western New England College. He also attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Program at Harvard University and Boston University’s Corporate Education Center, where he furthered his studies in leadership and critical thinking in the 21st century, with a focus on problem-solving in the public government sector.

  Brazis and his wife, Christine, will celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary next Wednesday (June 25). She grew up in Malden and owned a business in Saugus for a number of years. They have three children: Karlie, 28, who has a five-year-old son, Stevie; Zak, 24, who graduated from the University of New Haven two years ago and is currently scouting high school athletes for a company named Neutral Zone; and Lily, 20, a junior at Northeastern University who plays hockey.

  Brazis worked for 30 years for the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office, working his way up to second-in-command and overseeing a $65 million budget and about 750 employees. After retiring, he worked for eight years in the Fenway area of Boston for Northeast Security. Brazis served four and a half years as a Saugus selectman – including two and a half years as vice chair of the board.

  Brazis will be the guest speaker on Wednesday (June 25) night at SAVE’s 51st Annual Meeting & Dinner at Polcari’s Restaurant in Saugus. He plans to address the group on new initiatives and future plans at the CHaRM Center. Highlights of this week’s interview follow.

 

  Q: How many hours a week do you work as the town’s Director of Solid Waste & Recycling?

  A: Twenty-three hours a week. That’s the most I can work, as somebody who worked for the state and retired.

  Q: How many employees work in the Solid Waste/Recycling Department?

  A: There are three employees in the department. Bryan Moschella, who started last July, works full-time as the solid waste and recycling coordinator. Ron St. Cyr works 19 hours part-time a week. He’s retired from the Department of Corrections. He’s the early morning quality control supervisor. Ron started last March.

Both are needed and tremendous additions to the office. I was by myself for a while when I started 20 months ago. The department had these positions there. The challenge was to see if there was anyone interested in working for the department and getting them to apply for the jobs.

  Q: Please tell me a little bit about how the Solid Waste/Recycling Department works.

  A: Ron starts at 6:30 in the morning, checking the trucks to make sure they’re empty. There are four trucks: two for trash and two for recycling.

  Q: Why does he have to check the trucks?

  A: You want to make sure the trucks are empty so the town doesn’t wind up paying for tonnage before they start the residential routes. When I got this job, I was told to make sure I checked the trucks in the morning before they started.

  Q: Who owns the trucks?

  A: The four trucks are owned by Republic. They bought out JRM, who served the town for many years. Republic bought them out in the fall of 2022. The meeting place for Ron is 6:30 in the Dunkin’ Donuts on Hamilton Street at 6:30 in the morning, Monday through Friday, and the trucks start their routes at 7 a.m.

  Q: What happens if Ron finds stuff in the trucks?

  A: If they have stuff in them – very rarely does it happen – if there is, WIN Waste Management is open, and they can go down there and dump. But I don’t recall that happening.

  Q: What’s the biggest challenge?

  A: The biggest challenge is to make sure the trash and recycling on a given day is picked up. You don’t want any missed residents. You make sure that they do their routes and complete them. If residents complain that their trash and recycling was missed, Bryan will get the call and will make sure that we know that a resident was missed. Republic does its best to get somebody over there to pick it up so it won’t be out there for days.

We’ve had challenging days when trucks break down. That means the route won’t get finished, and it just throws the whole week out of sync.

  Q: How many complaints does your office field?

  A: We keep track of them. We average 225 a month for complaints. That could be trash or recycling. We’re talking about trash and recycling. Nobody cares about it until there’s a problem. When it’s a problem, it’s on the top of everybody’s list. When I first stepped in the office, on the first day there were 166 voicemails waiting.

When somebody calls, we call them back. The residents are very happy when we get back to them. If you call the office, you are going to get a returned call. If you didn’t, it’s an oddity.

  Q: How many people get served?

  A: Republic services 10,300 homes in the town of Saugus. We do not service businesses.

Another thing we cracked down on was small businesses putting out barrels which were going into our trash tonnage. The residents are paying for their trash to be taken – not businesses’ trash. Businesses can hire any disposal company they would like. They could hire Republic to get their dumpster. But they have to pay for it.

We pay Republic to pick up and haul the trash for us. And we pay the tipping fee for WIN. Those are the two big bills that come out of trash and recycling.

We have one year left on our contract with Republic, which expires on June 30, 2025. Saugus has a manual, not automated system. Republic has hinted that they’d like to go the automated route. But the three barrels per single family home is in the bylaw that would have to be changed.

  Q: What was the goal when you began as director of solid waste and recycling?

  A: The foundation was here. My goal was to see if we could find people to fill the office and give the residents the services they deserve. That was accomplished, thanks to the manager and everybody in town government who helped us. We streamlined some things to make the department better for the residents. We’re here to offer a service to the residents, and I’d like to see it run as smoothly as possible.

  Q: Have the complaints gone down since you began work?

  A: I’m glad to say they have. It takes a lot of people to help the department be successful, from the town manager and his staff to the DPW director and his staff – even women who answer the phone in the office. Everybody has helped. It’s not a department where you think you can do everything on your own.

  Q: What are some of the things you’ve done to make the department more effective?

  A: We’ve had a problem on Eastern Avenue. It was notorious for large amounts of illegal dumping. With grant money, we put two solar cameras down there. If people do illegal dumping down there, we’re going to be able to tell who. We’ve got another camera at one of the town’s buildings.

  Q: What are some of the other issues you are dealing with?

  A: We have a dumpster at the CHaRM Center [Center for Hard to Recycle Materials] where we have to put illegally dumped mattresses. That’s an additional cost right now.

  Q: How many illegally dumped mattresses are we talking about?

  A: In a year’s time, it’s upwards of 70 – the mattresses are at least $50 to dispose of. Before November 1, 2022, the town would pick them up. But the state law went into effect that bans mattresses from disposal in the trash. We’ve had to tag 106 mattresses that were left for trash pickup.

The town has offered the names of five businesses that take away mattresses. We give people five names and let them make the best deal. Since last August, we’ve been tagging illegal mattresses left in the trash. With spray paint, we put a number on it. If that mattress winds up someplace else in town, we know where it came from. The fact we don’t take mattresses anymore has to do with state law and has nothing to do with the town. The cheapest and easiest way to get rid of a mattress is to pay $25 to get your old mattress taken away when you have the new one brought into the house.

If the state thought about it before they put the new law into effect, they should have put seven receiving stations for mattresses strategically placed around the state. I think that would have been a good idea.

  Q: What’s the best indicator that recycling is working in Saugus?

  A: If the tonnage goes up; that’s something we’ve begun tracking. In the calendar year 2023, the town reported collecting 1,633 tons of recycling material. If it’s over that when we add up the numbers for 2024, we can say that the residents are doing a better job of recycling.

  Q: What are some of the other improvements you’re making?

  A: There used to be a Jersey barrier with a chain and a padlock at the entrance to the CHaRM Center. With grant money, we bought a gate and we put signage up there. The gate went up last October. We put speed bumps in the CHaRM Center. And we bought cones with grant money. The chain had been there 30 years, I’m told. It looks better now and it looks more professional. I guess we didn’t want the dump to look like a dump.

  Q: What’s with the slogan “Trash Never Sleeps,” which is printed on the back of your t-shirt and also on the front?

  A: That was my idea. Everything else has been a team effort. Neil Young once wrote a song “Rust Never Sleeps.” After being on the job a few months, I said to myself, “You know something, I guess the trash never sleeps. It’s always going to be there. Trash never takes a day off. I’m in the process of getting it trademarked.

  Q: How many people have these t-shirts like the one you’re wearing?

  A: Everyone in my department, all of the DPW workers and the women who work in the office. Anybody who works for the town and has a reason to be up in the CHaRM Center or has anything to do with trash or recycling has one.

All it does is make us all visible and lets people know we’re up there if they need some help or have a complaint. I must say that 99 percent of the people who come up here appreciate it and like it to its fullest. Let’s face it, we’re out there in the community. When you’re at somebody’s house tagging the trash or putting a notice in the mailbox, residents are pretty much going to know that you work for the town.

  Q: Have you had any dealings with WIN Waste Innovations?

  A: My only dealings with WIN had to do with Republic’s concerns about having to wait in line to drop off trash at the incinerator. So, we did a study on it and found out that Republic trucks were waiting an average of 57 minutes. I was there one day and trucks were waiting for two hours.

We’re the host community, so why can’t two Saugus trucks a day be able to circumvent the line? I’m asking that Saugus trucks be allowed to circumvent the line. I would think that the host community should get a little preference. If the incinerator weren’t in Saugus, we wouldn’t present this thing. I talked to the company in February and had another conversation in April. A company representative said they would get back to me. This is something that would improve the level of service. If the Republic trucks were out of there in seven minutes, that would be 53 more minutes that Republic trucks would be out on the route collecting trash. That would really help out because they’re playing a catchup game all week. If a truck breaks down or spends an amount of time waiting in line at the incinerator, that’s going to throw the day off.

  Q: Anything else that you would like to say?

  A: I really enjoy this job and find it’s a lot of fun. I was a selectman for four and a half years. I really enjoyed that and felt I could contribute to the town. I feel like now I’m contributing again to the town.

What I feel is making solid waste and recycling successful is the effort of everyone in town who we’ve asked for help has given us help. The women in the office – everyone helps – I don’t want anybody to think this is an individual effort. It’s a department. We’re a three-person department, but it takes a lot of people to make this department work, and everybody who has helped us has been gracious.