Snowy winter hammers road budgets

Associated Press

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.

In Michigan’s way-up-north Keweenaw Peninsula, where 200 inches of snow in a single season elicits barely a shrug, officials know there’s nothing in the budget more important than keeping the roads passable.

Yet even they have been caught short this merciless winter. Houghton County planned to spend about $2.1 million for plowing, salting and related maintenance, which experience suggested would be plenty, but has overshot it by $500,000 and counting.

State and local governments across a huge swath of the nation, from the Great Plains to the Upper Midwest and the Deep South to New England, are experiencing sticker shock after one of the coldest, snowiest, iciest winters in memory. Many have spent two or three times as much as they budgeted for clearing roads. More bad weather could send costs higher.

Even as Thursday’s official arrival of spring presages warmer weather, it’s clear that winter’s bitter aftertaste will linger much longer as officials compensate for untold millions in unexpected spending that includes patching a rash of potholes. In some states, legislatures already are preparing emergency appropriations. Elsewhere, road agencies are delaying repaving projects, cutting back on roadside mowing and summer hires, dipping into rainy-day funds and making do with battered equipment instead of buying more.

“It’ll have a considerable impact on cities and their fiscal health,” said James Brooks of the National League of Cities. “Just as they’re emerging from the depths of the Great Recession, they got whacked very hard by this intemperate winter.”

Its sheer ferocity caught nearly everyone by surprise, including those for whom dealing with cold and snow is second nature.

“This is a very unique winter, even talking with some of the old-timers who have been here longer than I have,” said Houghton County highway engineer Kevin Harju, a resident of the Lake Superior community since 1976. “You can get a lot of snow or you can get extremely low temperatures, but not both — except this year.”

Virginia budgeted $157 million for snow removal and may exceed it by $150 million — probably the most the state has ever spent for the purpose.

Montgomery County, Md., in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, has spent three times its budgeted amount. Illinois is 200 percent over its three-year average, and its crews have spread almost double the usual volume of salt — a mixed blessing, since it corrodes roads and bridges as it melts the snow.

Officials are scrambling to make up for the massive cost overruns. Atlanta, pummeled by ice storms that created epic traffic jams, is dipping into a rainy-day fund to cover $13.5 million in cleanup costs. In Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, legislators have approved special appropriations that will help but won’t pay for everything.