WESTERLO — Two men with decades of experience are vying for the Westerlo highway-superintendent position. 

The first is the town’s acting highway superintendent, Dave Pecylak, who was appointed to the position in July after the previous superintendent, Jody Ostrander, retired. 

Pecylak, 45, has 20 years of municipal highway experience, logging 12 years with the Albany County Highway Department before joining the town’s highway department eight years ago.

 The son of town board member Lorraine Pecylak, he is running on the Republican and Conservative lines.

Pecylak is being challenged on the Democratic line by James Brush, 57, who has 29 years of experience with The Gorman Group, a roadway company. 

Brush is also a longtime member of the Westerlo Volunteer Fire Department, holding various positions, including deputy chief, and had been with the Greenville Fire Company and Rescue Squad before that. 

The Enterprise spoke with both candidates this week about their qualifications and goals should they win the election on Nov. 5. 

Pecylak 

Pecylak told The Enterprise that he doesn’t have any major overhauls in mind, and, beyond the normal day-to-day work, would focus on getting things at the garage more organized.

“There’s a lot of stuff sitting around and I just wanted to clean it up, get rid of stuff,” he said. “We get a lot of parts and stuff that we don’t have the trucks for anymore.” 

Pecylak also said there’s machinery that’s “getting tired and worn out” that needs to be dealt with, “depending on the funding we have.” 

He said he’s been going door-to-door to speak with residents, letting them know what the department will be up to if they vote him in.

“Basically keeping the guys busy, out and about keeping up the roads, potholes, and patching, ditching, stuff like that …,” Pecylak said. “Hopefully they’ll vote me in, and we’ll go from there.” 

Brush

Brush told The Enterprise this week that he hopes to bring to the town his leadership experience with The Gorman Group, along with all the many types of training he’s received in the private sector.

He spent 27 years as a working foreman and supervisor for the company, and nearly two years as a shop foreman. 

“I think I’m pretty well-qualified for the position in this town to try and make things better,” Brush said. 

He said that on top of his direct experience managing employees and subcontractors, he’s received formal training in “first aid, leadership training, management training, supervisor training, anything to do with maintenance there’s a lot of training on that, electrical training, BearCat School training, computer training — there’s just a lot.” 

Brush said he knows how to run a safe and well-organized operation — two things that often go hand-in-hand.

Using the purchasing of a new piece of equipment as an example, Brush said, “The other side of it is, did you find out what the warranties were? Did you get another set of fuel filters for this machine? Was anybody trained on the machine before use? It’s all this stuff that becomes a safety issue.”

At Gorman, Brush said, he would spend time each morning going over parts that were getting delivered and making sure assignments were in place so that work could get started promptly. 

Brush said he’d like to implement a spreadsheet system that tracks maintenance and work orders so that things don’t get neglected. 

“People call in, ‘We got this problem, we got that problem,’” he said; without tracking it, “people forget,” he said. 

And on tracking maintenance, Brush said, “When’s the last time the rear ends were changed, or the transmission fluid was changed, or the oil was changed? Are we going by hours, are we going by mileage? What’s the wear and tear? What’s the cost factor of running this piece of equipment versus buying a new one?

“There’s just a whole mess of spreadsheets that you can make and do to go forward,” he said.