Award-winning Leominster DPW makes work safety gains

For Leominster Mayor Dean Mazzarella and the Public Works Department, the measures of success are the city workers who go home safely every night to their families, the people who don’t get hurt on public property, and the reduced number of accident and injury claims that the city receives.

Over the past six years or so, the city has been building a safety culture into its public works operations, particularly through the work of Shawn Comeau, the city’s code enforcement officer for Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.

For many years, Leominster faced significant claims for accidents, injuries and property damage, Mazzarella said, and officials realized there was a need for change.

“The first thing is, we don’t want anybody to get hurt, whether it’s an employee or a citizen or a visitor,” he said.

On Jan. 25, Comeau received a Safety Leadership Award from MIIA, the MMA’s insurance nonprofit, for “advancing Leominster beyond safety compliance into safety leadership.” The safety-focused work of Comeau and the DPW has resulted in keeping workers and members of the public safer, and reducing claims against the city, Mazzarella recently told the MMA. And that safety mindset has been spreading to other city departments, he said.

“It’s creating that environment where everybody’s thinking about safety,” Mazzarella said.

The Leominster DPW’s – and the city’s – increased safety efforts have aligned with the strengthening of workplace safety standards statewide for public employees. In 2019, a state law applied OSHA standards to public workers. Three years later, Massachusetts became an OSHA State Plan state, meaning it now has its own workplace safety plan that at least matches, if not exceeds, the federal OSHA standards for roughly 430,000 state and municipal employees.

Comeau had already been working for the DPW as a stormwater compliance worker when Leominster received its first OSHA-level inspection from the state, in 2019. The intensity of that inspection — and the need to overhaul how the city handled everything from hazardous materials storage to ladder safety — convinced Public Works Director Raymond Racine that the DPW needed a safety officer. The mayor and the City Council agreed, and Comeau, who has private-sector environmental and safety experience, took on the role.

Working with the DPW foremen, Comeau provides material each week for “toolbox talks” covering topics such as ladder safety and work zone safety with the department’s roughly 40 employees. The department will also provide site-specific training, detailed down to safe shovel use during a particular task. Comeau said the work also involves job hazard analyses, program review site audits, and virtual trainings.

Leominster also works extensively with MIIA, Comeau said, and makes use of its safety training covering areas including bucket truck use, trench safety and confined space awareness. The department also regularly applies for MIIA grants, which has allowed it to purchase safety equipment, he said.

City officials said the safety focus helped Leominster keep COVID infection rates lower during the pandemic, and prevent any employee injuries or accidents during historic flooding in September 2023. For its flood recovery efforts, the DPW received the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in Public Works Award from the New England Chapter of the American Public Works Association.

“It’s been an adventure, but we’re pretty proud of what we’ve created and what we’ve done,” Racine said.

The city would like to expand the DPW’s code enforcement officer to a citywide role. Comeau urged other communities to dedicate themselves to building more robust safety cultures.

“One or two things could happen with these other municipalities,” Comeau said. “They’re either going to see the light, you know, and realize that this is coming and it’s not going away. Or something bad is going to happen, and they’ll be forced into it. And I would always choose the first option.”