Bedford’s fourth director of facilities began his career in the field as a part-time Job Lane School custodian right after graduating from Bedford High School.
Ron Scaltreto has been promoted from assistant director to head the department by Superintendent of Schools Cliff Chuang and Interim Town Manager Colleen Doyle. The agency has a unique structure, under the organizational management of both the schools and municipal government.
Doyle officially announced the appointment at the Aug. 14 Select Board meeting.
“He brings a lot of institutional knowledge and we are working with him to talk about the future of the Facilities Department,” she said.
Doyle noted that Scaltreto has been acting director since the departure of Taissir Alani, who resigned, effective June 16.
“A lot of people know me,” Scaltreto said during an interview last week. “I think I can do the job and I think I can help the town. Bedford is still part of me.”
The new director was a commuting freshman to the University of Lowell in the fall of 1984 when he applied for a 7-11 p.m. custodial shift at the school. A couple of years later the position became full time, and Scaltreto, still attending ULowell, worked through much of the night.
“I had a lot of energy back then,” he explained.
Early in 1990, Scaltreto was awarded a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
“I’ve never worked in a practice or a hospital, but I use my psychology degree every day,” he said.
The joint town-school Facilities Department was organized to ensure equity in cleaning and maintenance across the board in 1997 with custodial staff under the schools’ management and maintenance and repair staff under town auspices. Scaltreto was assigned increasingly expanded custodial oversight duties between 1998 and 2001.
That year he was promoted to the department’s operations manager, with responsibilities ranging from revising the custodial and maintenance procedures manual and providing information for operating and capital budget preparation to purchasing of materials and services and overseeing scheduling, setup, and cleanup for special events like elections.
Alani named Scaltreto assistant director of facilities in 2008.
“I have had three really good bosses,” Scaltreto said, starting with the first department head, John “Skip” Bandini, who was “instrumental in setting the strong base for what we are today. I certainly learned a lot from Richard Jones and followed up with Taissir. They gave me opportunities and allowed me to grow. It’s important for them to get recognized for where I am today.”
He said Jones was “very instrumental in getting me the education that he thought would help me in the future,” and he is grateful for “the money that the town invested in me over the years.” Scaltreto received a certificate of professional achievement in facilities management from Northeastern University in 2009.
The appointment fulfills an aspiration Scaltreto said he first began to nurture about 10 years ago.
“I really started thinking, ‘Maybe someday I want to be the director somewhere,’ and hoped it could have been Bedford. It came to fruition.”
Scaltreto said one of his strongest assets is “knowledge of this town, a connection to the older generation.” He also has connections with facilities personnel in area towns. “Certainly, during Covid, everyone was reaching out to see what they were doing and how they were handling certain situations.”
He also pointed out that he has met many younger residents through his extracurricular work as a backup site manager for BHS varsity contests, a service he began back when Bob Petrillo was director of athletics more than 20 years ago. “I just got to know everything, what needed to be done during the games,” he said.
Scaltreto and his wife Heidi have two children in their 20s.
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