Paving Crew Rolls With The Unexpected

The public works crew gathered in the shade on South Genesee Street ready to make the road like new again. But they couldn’t get started: The asphalt truck hadn’t arrived.

It was morning one on the first major street-paving job of the season. After waking up early, the crew had to adapt to a change in plans.

A group of garbage workers had called in sick that day, forcing the city to reallocate truck drivers who had been scheduled to transport asphalt to the pavers.

Lynwood Dorsey, New Haven’s superintendent for the streets division of the Department of Public Works, fired instructions into his cell phone as he sped to the scene of the latest mix-up to bedevil roadwork in New Haven. An old pro, he doesn’t get fazed by the unexpected; he knows it’s part of the routine.

“I tell you — this phone just don’t stop,” Dorsey said as he skirted past a speeding car. ​“I get phone calls all night long.”

Twenty minutes later, the asphalt did arrive, and work was on.

Dorsey started in public works as a street laborer in the 1980s and worked his way up to the position of New Haven’s streets superintendent. He knows how precious each moment is on the job.

The city, which rents paving equipment from an outside firm, has only six weeks a year to finish about 15 street paving assignments. Tthe South Genesee project, the first full street-length paving job of the year, was expected to take most of the week given a forecast for rain in coming days. 

Dorsey parked at the end of South Genesee for the first morning of the job Monday. He hopped out of the car to greet Richie Esposito, the project foreman. Esposito — who, according to co-workers, once expressed interest in dining on roadkill — has a U.S. Army tattoo on his bulky bicep.

A few moments later, as the first asphalt truck rolled down South Genesee, the paving crew moved into position. Esposito climbed atop the ​“spread box” — a bulky, cube-shaped structure that rolls fresh asphalt onto the street — to take control of the machine while the truck deposited its load. Steve Mustakos and Rafael Rivas, standing beside their supervisor on the two wings of the machine, slowly adjusted the thickness of the asphalt streaming out of the spread box.

Rivas lives in West Haven, a city the crew sometimes refers to as ​“Waste Haven.” He has worked in the public works department for 16 years. ​“I feel like an old man already,” Rivas said. Mustakos, who enthusiastically explained the nuances of his job, has been paving streets for nearly three decades.

The spread box travelled slowly up the street, trailing asphalt in its wake. Jason Badilla, who moved here from Puerto Rico as a teenager, used a rake to press the asphalt against the curb and seal cracks in the fresh pavement.

“It was pretty tough at first,” Badilla said, reflecting on his early years in the U.S. ​“I was young. I adapted to it, picked up the language pretty quick. It’s like living the American Dream: There are ups and downs, but that’s the point of life.”

On the other side of the street, Jerome Houser got into the driver’s seat of a vehicle called ​“the roller,” and started discussing his favorite movies. ​“I’m waiting for Bad Boys 3,” he said, grinning. ​“If a movie catches me in the first five minutes, I’ll watch it.”

Houser, who lives with his wife just a couple of blocks down from South Genesee, receives five times as many overtime hours as his coworkers, a byproduct of his operation and engineering degree from Meridian Tech. After the spread box finished laying the first round of pavement, he drove the roller back and forth over the asphalt, flattening it into the street.

It would take another quarter of an hour for the next asphalt delivery to arrive. The crew sat in the shade, smoking cigarettes and scrolling through their Facebook feeds. Dorsey, his phone ringing, walked back to his car, presumably to settle another nearby emergency.

Rivas sidled over to Houser to joke about the additional overtime, which he called ​“president’s privileges.” 

“These guys like to break my stones,” Houser laughed. ​“They could make a sitcom on this.”

David Lawlor, a shoveler who also does heavy lifting, looked aghast as the crew debated the merits of a summer sex cruise advertised as an ​“eight-day orgy at sea.” He seemed to slip naturally into the role of straight man. ​“I like the cruise, but I’m not sure about the rest,” Lawlor said.

After a while, another truck appeared in the distance. It was supposed to rain the next day, and the crew still had ​“a big-ass street” to pave. Esposito, Rivas and Mustakos jumped aboard the spread box. Badilla went to pick up his rake. Houser, his eyes twinkling with laughter, climbed into the roller.

“We’ve just got so much to do with so little manpower,” said Dorsey, returning in his car. ​“But they get the job done.” They were on their way.

Here’s the season’s list of scheduled paving projects.