Public Grounds

Our Services

The Public Grounds Division includes the Park, Forestry, and Cemetery subdivisions:

Park Division

  • Maintains approximately 630 acres of town land.
  • Maintains athletic fields, hard courts, historic sites, playgrounds, the pool and reservoir complexes, the bike path, public grounds areas, and conservation areas.
  • Responsibilities include mowing, turf maintenance, landscape maintenance, trash pickup, site amenity maintenance, building maintenance, athletic field maintenance, playground maintenance, pool maintenance, equipment maintenance, and athletic equipment maintenance.
  • Assists with Town special events including Patriot's Day and parades.
  • Assists with snow clearing operations.

Forestry Division

  • Maintains approximately 15,000 street trees and numerous trees on public grounds, historic sites, conservation areas, and park areas.
  • Responsibilities include tree removal, tree pruning, tree planting, and general tree care maintenance. Works with the Tree Committee to identify locations for new trees.
  • Enforces the Town's Tree Bylaw.
  • Inspects trees for hazards and for determination of ownership.
  • Assists with Town special events.
  • Performs streetlight inspection and maintenance.
  • Assists with snow clearing operations.

Cemetery Division:

  • Responsible for the maintenance and administration of four cemeteries (Westview, Munroe, Ye Old Burial Ground, and Robbins) totaling approximately 31 acres.
  • Responsible for the sale of graves, record keeping, burials, and stone installations.
  • Responsible for mowing, turf maintenance, equipment maintenance, landscape maintenance, and building maintenance.
  • Assists with snow clearing operations.

Street Lights

  • A Call Center at the DPW operations receives requests 24 hours a day. The phone number to report street light outages is 781-274-8388. You may also report street light outages by email to eracioppi@lexingtonma.gov. Calls are handled and repairs made in the order in which they are received by date and/or whether or not the call is emergency in nature.
  • The Forestry Division Staff performs the initial inspection and then repairs bulbs and sensors. The average time to inspect and repair an outage once it is called into the Call Center is 7 to 14 days. If the repair requires electrical work, the contractor's response time could be an additional 7 to 14 days.
  • Requests for new streetlights need to be mailed or emailed to the Public Works Director. Each request will be reviewed and forwarded to the Select Board for approval.

Goals and Objectives

  • Invest in the infrastructure of athletic fields to improve the quality of each facility while reducing scheduled maintenance costs.
  • Maintain the landscapes at each of the Town's parks and recreational facilities to provide a consistent appearance without visible signs of deterioration.
  • Prevent vandalism from detracting from the quality of maintenance and facility appearance.
  • Ensure the Public Grounds maintenance agenda accurately reflects the needs of its customers.
  • Reduce the liability of the Town by identifying and significantly reducing any existing hazardous public shade tree that could threaten the public and/or private property, pedestrians, and vehicular traffic.
  • Resolve resident and interdepartmental tree requests in a timely fashion.
  • Increase the health of the community's forest resources through proper maintenance practices that promote the establishment of new plantings and the longevity and value of existing mature trees.
  • Promote and support education/community outreach, citizen committees, and volunteers.