The Mayor and City Council invited us to their regular public meeting June 10th to recognize Chris Chaney for winning the Delaware T2/LTAP Center’s Build a Better Mousetrap competition. As you will recall, Chris and other members from the City of Lewes Maintenance Department designed and fabricated a connection bracket that made their newer loader and their legacy 10’ snowplow team up for snow removal, beach sand maintenance, and other heavy tasks. If you haven’t seen it, watch the pair work together to tidy up the sand ahead of the summer beach season.
As this year’s winner, Chris received a framed certificate, a $100 Visa gift card, and of course, the Prestigious Mousetrap trophy. The Council video-records their meetings and you can watch the presentation (including Rusty’s lively puns), beginning at 3:45 minutes.
According to Rick Melendez, his manager, Chris is an idea machine and frequently has ideas for improving operational performance, mitigating risk for employees and the public, and saving money. Surely, not everything he cooks up is pure gold, but we believe that every idea matters and clearly, Rick and the rest of the City government agree.
What really grabbed our attention from this entry was the opportunity it presented to introduce newer members of the department to skills such as cutting metal and welding. Collectively, we talk and talk and talk about investing in our employees and this is how you walk the walk. This is one of the ways you build a skilled workforce and create a respectful environment that makes these folks want to stay.
Having won in Delaware, Chris’s idea will move on to the national competition and we hope to hear the winner at our July National LTAP Association conference. Fingers crossed and if Chris’s idea takes the prize, perhaps we’ll be invited back to Lewes for another celebration.
In our travels, we find that local agencies across Delaware are innovators, but sadly, these gems often remain a secret. Why? Probably because many of the men and women of public works have a heads down, get it done mentality and when they come up with these ideas, it is hard for them to recognize them as important. Often their view is, “anyone could have come up with that, anyone could have done that.” Well, sure, but “they” didn’t, and they could benefit from your inspiration. We’ve seen these ideas copied and adapted over and over.
That is why we love the Build a Better Mousetrap program. Your idea should be shared. Another agency in Delaware or across the country may see it and copy it outright. Great! Or they may say, “yeah, I see what you did there, but I’m going to change it a bit, take it up a notch, or adapt it to what our unique needs are.” Either way, others benefit from your brilliance and the idea takes on new life, again and again. 
We are always on the hunt for these innovations and not all of them escape our attention. You can see several that we’ve been able to capture on our YouTube channel playlist. Indeed, we hope to have several showcased this October at the Roadway Management Conference (reminder, registration is open). The national program assembles National Entry Booklets each year that catalog ideas from across the country (which make for great browsing on a rainy day in the shop to spur some ideas of your own), including a couple from Delaware. Finally, in an award-winning series of e-newsletter articles in July, September, and November 2020, we did a deeper dive into some of these innovations and we think they make great reading.
In other news, just prior to our presentation to Chris, the Mayor recognized Kenny Morris, also from the Maintenance Department, for his ten years of service to Lewes. Clearly, the City of Lewes is another excellent example of Delaware municipalities that foster a great work environment that in turn provides an energetic staff that can serve its residents and visitors well.
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