I was delighted to get the opportunity today to tour the City’s newly expanded Gude Drive maintenance facility and show it off for the City’s cable station, Channel 11.

Gude Drive is where several hundred Public Works and Recreation and Parks folks report to work every day — about half the City’s workforce.  It’s where all City vehicles get their maintenance, their repairs, and their gas, and it’s where we park them when we’re not using them.  It’s where we store the salt, rocks, dirt, sand and, oddly, beet juice that keep this City running.  It’s where all our street signs are made.

Pat Stroud, Public Works Fleet Manager, was kind enough to take me around and demonstrate what $10 million in taxpayer money buys.  The highlight is a great new vehicle maintenance facility that will allow for much more efficient maintenance and repair of the City’s surprisingly large fleet of vehicles.

Some of the City’s larger vehicles — think cherry-pickers — couldn’t even fit in the old building, let alone go up on the lifts.  The new building can handle any vehicle the City owns or is likely to own in the foreseeable future.

By moving the vehicle maintenance shop out of the old buildings they had been in, the other divisions that have a home on Gude Drive will also be able to rearrange themselves and work more efficiently.

Rockville will be a more efficient, safer, and better city with this project completed.

The segment on Channel 11 starts airing October 1.