Little Snowfall Means Troy DPW Under Budget – For Now

Even including the 2-4 inches of snow , snowfall totals for the season – which amount to just 4.5 inches so far – will still sit well below the average of 15.7 inches for this time of year in Michigan, according to Debra Elliott, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in White Lake.

As a result, the Troy Department of Public Works (DPW) – which would normally be plowing and salting the roads frequently by this time of year – is saving money.

"It certainly is common sense that people can make the conclusion we haven’t spent any large amounts of money," Troy Department of Public Works Director Tim Richnak said. "If we have a mild winter, certainly our expenditures will be down."

However, Richnak cautions, the mild weather so far doesn't mean the department will come in under budget by the end of the season.

"We’re not quite halfway through winter yet, and you can’t calculate what you’re going to save until winter’s over," Richnak said. "We’ve gotten some of the worst snowstorms and spent some of the largest amount of funds in February and March in the past, and I’d be remiss to say we saved 'x' number of dollars because that’s not how it works with anything that has to do with Mother Nature.”

Keeping busy in the meantime

Area meteorologists are predicting the weather will soon normalize and snowfall totals could start to climb in Michigan.

"The driving factor is an eastward extension of the jet stream over the Western Pacific," said Joseph Clark, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in White Lake. "It looks like it won’t be enough to totally change this warm weather pattern, but it looks to change things quite a bit."

"We’re experiencing a pattern change, which is going to bring us closer to normal," Elliott said.

The pattern change and subsequent lack of snow has given the Troy DPW time to spend on other projects such as repairing and improving sewers and roads, Richnak said.

"We get other maintenance operations completed," Richnak said. "We’re still spending money, it just is going toward different projects.”

Managing the rising cost of snow removal

“Salt is our largest expense in our operation," Richnak said. "It’s a greater portion than labor and a greater portion than equipment.”

Richnak, who has worked for the city for 19 years, said the price of salt when he started was between $17 and $19 per ton. Now, the cost has risen to around $47 per ton.

Accordingly, the city – which uses an average of 10,000 tons of salt each year – can expect to spend about half a million dollars each year just on salt.

“If we get one ice storm – and we’ve been fortunate not to get too many – and if we get an inch of ice out there, we could use up a lot of our resources," Richnak said.

To help battle the rising cost of snow removal, Richnak said the department has stopped replacing employees when they leave or retire. “We have 16 street department employees that do work; we used to have 28," he said. "We had retirements that prevented layoffs.”

Ready for snow

In Troy, the DPW plows all of the public roads within city limits, including county roads, per a contract with the Road Commission for Oakland County.

"For the last 11 years, the city of Troy has had a contract with Oakland County where we maintain county roads within the city,” Richnak said. "We had conversation with them and said, 'What if you were to give us those funds and we could do it with our operations?' We did that and look at renewing that contract every year.”

The city has more than 50 snow removal vehicles, including dump trucks, pickup trucks with plows, front loaders and road graders.

With the relatively small amount of snow predicted tonight and tomorrow, Richnak said it is unlikely crews will have to be out in full force plowing and salting Troy's roads.

“The ground is not frozen, the road surfaces are warm, and as that snow comes down, it’s going to take several hours until that road service gets to where it would freeze.”

Then again, it's Michigan, he said, and Michigan weather is unpredictable.

“You really have to evaluate snowstorms differently," he said. "In the history of the world, there’s never been two snowstorms alike.”

Stay tuned to Troy Patch for the latest weather information and traffic conditions.