With all the construction going on around Sloatsburg, sometimes it can be difficult to decide which crew is with which company or outfit.
“If you run over a guy wearing lime green then you were aiming for him,” said Village of Sloatsburg Trustee Dan O’Leary about the DPW’s new lime green work vests.
Over the last several years, the Village of Sloatsburg has been branding its Department of Public Works vehicles, which are all now a recognizable yellow with familiar round blue Sloatsburg decal. The push to make Sloatsburg’s workers recognizable to the public includes new uniforms with very road-visible lime green work vests.
“Now we match the surrounding municipalities such as Hillburn and Suffern” said Sloatsburg Trustee Peter Akey about the village’s effort to provide DPW workers complete personal protection equipment (PPE), an OSHA requirement.
Akey began agitating for DPW worker uniforms when he first took his trustee seat in 2010. But it wasn’t until Trustees Dan O’Leary and Thomas Buckley came onboard in 2012 that the issue gained momentum. Both O’Leary and Buckley, as well as Akey, have backgrounds in OSHA requirements and are familiar with worksite regulations.
O’Leary, who serves as the village Commissioner of Public Works, in particular has extensive work on job sites that enforce strict OSHA requirements. O’Leary said the new uniforms serve two purposes — safety and identification. The Sloatsburg DPW uniform issue dovetailed with the increased construction activity throughout the area.
“With all the work we’ve had going on, you didn’t know who was who,” O’Leary said, adding that the DPW always had a uniform line item in its budget, but for whatever reason never implemented a uniform policy.
“Now they are in lime green, it’s reflective and a bright color,” O’Leary said. “You can’t miss it. If you run over a guy wearing lime green then you were aiming for him,” he said, half joking about the visibility of the new uniforms.
Both O’Leary and Buckley said the new DPW gear color corresponds to the OSHA movement to outfit workers in lime green, a distinct color difference from the universal orange of roadside cones and barrels.
The DPW gear includes various pairs of Dickies work pants, short sleeve shirts, longsleeve shirts for the winter, longsleeve crewneck sweatshirts, a zip sweatshirt, and a five-in-one coat that has detachable sleeves which turns the coat into a heavy vest. All the outer gear will have an identifiable Sloatsburg label. Each worker also has a boot stipend of at least $90 per year. DPW workers will also wear hardhats and goggles during roadside and other on-site work.
Akey said that the village is trying to work out a cooperative agreement with Hillburn and Suffern to set up a visit from the Boot Truck, an onsite vendor that visits municipalities and worksites and provides a number of name brand work boots at cost.
The uniforms were rolled out last week, so Sloatsburg’s DPW has joined the regulated world of work safety with its new splash of green.
