JULIE LANE PHOTO Highway Superintendent and Public Works Commissioner Jay Card displays the maps he currently uses on the job. He hopes a GPS system the Town Board is looking into will eventually guide him and his workers as they tackle the challenges of the job.

If there was one surprise for newly elected Jay Card Jr. when he took over as Shelter Island’s highway superintendent and  commissioner of public works this month, it was discovering there was no document detailing how the myriad aspects of his department should be functioning.

“It’s absolutely a credit to the men that they were operating and doing things on a daily basis” with no plan to guide them, Mr. Card said.

Speaking in his office on Friday in the town highway barn on Bowditch Road, Mr. Card was generous in his praise for his predecessor, Mark Ketcham, and others who have held the job.

“I’m a systems kind of guy,” Mr. Card said, describing the work that has consumed him 12 to 14 hours a day, he said, since the beginning of the month.

“My nature is to leave everything better than I found it,” he said about his goal. “My job is to delegate responsibility and let [the crew] get the job done,” he said.

While he goes to various work sites around the Island, most of his time during his first three weeks has been spent sitting at his desk working out details of how he wants the department to operate during his tenure.

During his first week in office, he spent a lot of time watching, evaluating and asking crew members why they do various jobs the way they do, he said.

“I didn’t want to just come in and start changing everything around,” he said. He had his own ideas about how various jobs might best be tackled, he said, but is open to hearing from the people doing jobs differently. He was willing to follow their method if he finds there are good reasons for doing so, he said.

SECTORS ASSIGNED

Pulling on his experience as former town police officer, Mr. Card said he had been following through on his campaign pledge to divide the town into sectors and assign specific crews to be responsible for each sector. That gives crew members a sense of ownership for their territories. It also gives neighbors in each area a chance to reach out to assigned workers to assure needs are being met, Mr. Card said.

He started out by using Route 114 to divide the town in half and then outlined four sectors on the western side of the highway and three on the eastern side.

When he visits with various neighborhood associations to determine their concerns, he’ll be bringing along crew leaders for those sectors who will can address specific issues, he said.

“We don’t have enough vehicles,” Mr. Card said, noting that workers often double up in a single vehicle to tackle projects. But he was not envisioning a major investment in new equipment anytime soon. He said he was setting in place a fleet management system to track when vehicles need routine maintenance and at what point their operating costs and repair expenses make it more practical to replace them.

He said he was also looking into getting golf carts or stand-up personal transport vehicles for workers at the Recycling Center so they could move around the grounds faster and more efficiently.

UNIFORMS FOR CREWS

Mr. Card has been working with crew members to create uniforms that will make department members readily identifiable to the public.

That it’s the off-season for his own landscaping contract business is a plus, Mr. Card said. But he speculated that it might become necessary to hire another worker in the spring to assist his brother-in-law, who is picking up the slack in the business while he attends to the demands of his new town job.

About three-quarters of clean-up and repairs needed at Shell Beach after Tropical Storm Irene’s visit last August have been completed. A new boiler is in place at the American Legion Hall. There has been a lot of cutting back of limbs that were jutting out from surrounding woods and scratching passing vehicles, Mr. Card’s included. There has also been clean-up work along the First Causeway. The second will soon follow, he said.

Crews have been picking up truckloads of brush daily. Mr. Card didn’t have a specific figure on how much has been coming in over the scales but he said it has been substantial.

Workers have been putting in dry wells for drainage and groundwater recharge along West Neck Road and will be doing the same along Tarkettle Road very soon, he said.

Only a few people so far have taken advantage of an expanded wood-collection policy allowing residents to gather firewood from broken and downed trees on public lands all winter including Saturdays, not just on weekdays in March. It was an idea suggested to the Town Board by Mr. Card. (Permits can be obtained at the town clerk’s office.) He said he expected more residents to take advantage of the program once his workers down damaged limbs and trees in the various locations.

The crews also have been working on removing invasive species in the town reserve at Dickerson Creek.

CAUSEWAY WORK

Mr. Card said he had been consulting with engineers and Department of Environmental Conservation officials on erosion control and anti-flooding work that needs to be done on the Second Causeway. His aim has been to have all permits in place and everything ready to roll by the start of summer so that work can begin right after Labor Day. It’s possible some work could start earlier but that will be up to residents in the area who may not want any disruption of the roadways during the peak season, Mr. Card said.

The department has seven highway workers attending to brush and 54 miles of roadways; four who work the Recycling Center; and two mechanics who service not only the fleet of Highway Department vehicles but also town police cars and ambulances. .

Is that staffing sufficient? The jury is still out on that, Mr. Card said.