Port Colborne in good shape with winter budget
While this winter seemed to take a toll on residents across Niagara, as the snow falls, melts, falls, melts and falls again, it hasn’t hurt the winter control operations budgets of Welland or Port Colborne.
“As far as 2018 goes, we’re not in bad shape,” Peter Sense, Port Colborne’s treasurer, said recently. “We’ve spent about twothirds of our budget.”
He said the city’s winter budget runs January to March and then from November to December, and in 2017 Port Colborne came in under budget for snow plowing, salting, sanding and clearing city parking lots.
“Hopefully things will slow down now,” said Senese, adding the city should be fine in November of this year when the snow starts to fly.
Jerry Boc, Welland’s manager of public works, didn’t have figures yet for 2018, but said in 2017 the city spent $471,150 on winter control operations.
Boc said Welland’s budget takes in everything from sanding, plowing, salting, clearing bus shelters and sidewalks to manual clearing of bridges.
The city also counts preparation time in the budget, making sure things are ready before a snowstorm hits.
And with advances in technology and weather forecasting, Boc said the city can be ready for winter storms four to five days ahead of time.
“The weather reports give us the severity of a storm, the winds with it and even how much accumulation there will be. That helps us big time.”
Like Port Colborne and most municipalities in Niagara, Welland salts, sands and plow the major routes in town first and then gets to secondary roads.
Operators of the various pieces of equipment are only allowed to work so many hours, as well, said Boc, adding it’s a health and safety issue to ensure fatigue doesn’t set in.
The two municipalities also send out bylaw enforcement officers during storms to make sure vehicles aren’t on the roads blocking the plows.
“The last storm we had, our bylaw people started at 3 a.m.,” said Boc.
As for this past season, Boc said, “It’s been a long brutal winter.”