Voters should re-elect Farwell

Friday, February 26, 2010

To the Editor:

We are writing this letter to ask the voters of Brookline to re-elect Jerry Farwell for road agent.

Jerry Farwell has been road agent for the past seven years. The Brookline roads have been maintained at a cost lower than surrounding towns (based on a study done a few years ago).

Jerry is a fiscal conservative and always has done his best to keep the budget under control. His budget has been flat for the past two years. As road agent he gets no pay. The town only pays for services rendered.

Jerry owns the equipment; the town does not own any of the equipment used for any road maintenance (plows, trucks, sanders, etc). Any equipment we see working the roads belongs to Jerry. He has a rate and equipment schedule with the Board of Selectmen’s office.

He has purchased many pieces of equipment just for town maintenance. His company employs 11 people, 10 from Brookline. He has a civil engineering degree, so he is well-qualified.

He is on call 24/7. He is called each time the ambulance, fire department and police department goes out on emergency calls that require road work. He also has his own shop for equipment maintenance, to put on plows, store sanders loaded with sand for immediate response.

Jerry has an office/secretary Monday through Friday and calls are forwarded after hours, so all calls are promptly answered. He stores sand, owns a screening plant to purchase sand locally, and screens it himself, which is cheaper than buying screened sand.

The ice storm in Dec. ‘08 showed us how well our “highway department” operates when we were informed how much faster PSNH was able to get around our town roads to facilitate repairs compared to neighboring towns.

Jerry has done a great job and we hope he continues to serve our town as road agent.

Kevin and Cindy Gorgoglione

Brookline