Local budgets plowed under

When the snow began falling on Dec. 18, no one could have predicted what a major impact the fluffy white stuff would ultimately have on the taxpayers of Northern Colorado.

But two mammoth blizzards in the last two weeks of December clobbered local snow removal budgets, resulting in nearly $3 million spent by Northern Colorado cities and Larimer and Weld counties.

Officials say they will likely have to make some cuts in services in 2007 to make up for the expense, which was far above the normal amount budgeted for snow removal.

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Jim White, administrator for Berthoud, said the amount the town spent on the storms “definitely exceeds $100,000” – 20 times higher than the town’s normal snow removal budget.

White said the town paid between $85,000 and $90,000 to three contractors it hired to help its crews with snow removal. He said the unexpected expense will eventually be felt somewhere in the town’s budget but exactly where was yet unknown.

“Something else, obviously, will fade away from our projects for the year,” he said. “We’ll definitely have to shift some funds.”

FEMA not forthcoming

Northern Colorado counties and municipalities had staked their hopes on getting some help from the federal government in the early days after the two blizzards. But strict rules by the Federal Emergency Management Administration tripped them up, according to Frank Lancaster, Larimer County manager.

To qualify for FEMA assistance, a county must have a “snowfall of record” or within 10 percent of that record total. Lancaster said the official National Weather Services measurement site in Larimer County recorded only 14 inches for the bigger of the two storms.

“That’s the biggest thing that hurt us,” he said. “Everybody I talked to had more than that.”

Roy Rudisill, Weld County’s director of Emergency Management, told the Business Report he was still trying to get the county included in a disaster declaration issued for several Colorado counties on Jan. 7.

In a survey conducted by the Weld County Sheriff’s Department’s Office of Emergency Management, Weld County communities racked up a total of about $1.1 million in snow removal costs.

Seven-figure hit

Meanwhile, a roundup of snow costs in Larimer County communities totals about $1.6 million, according to the Larimer County Emergency Management office and the city of Fort Collins.

Erik Nilsson, Larimer’s emergency manager, said he’s disappointed the county was turned down by FEMA. “Frankly, I thought we were going to get a declaration by now,” he said. “At this point, it’s probably much ado about nothing but we’ve taken a seven-figure hit.”

Fort Collins appears to have taken the biggest hit from the storms. Diane Jones, deputy city manager, said the city spent $740,000 on the Dec. 20 storm that dumped about two feet of snow inside city limits. Another $135,000 was spent clearing snow from the second storm, which began falling Dec. 28.

Jones said city crews and contractors cleared about 21,000 lane miles of the deep white stuff, even though in many residential neighborhoods it amounted to little more than a one-lane pedestrian and traffic path.

Fort Collins has been operating on a particularly lean budget, and the extra snow expense will be felt somewhere, Jones said, but as far as where that would be, she added, “We don’t really know yet.”

“Obviously, we have snow plowing in the city’s budget,” she said. “I think we’re going to have to look at our resources to help deal with it.”

Jones said the city has funds set aside for such emergencies. “We have some resources we can look to,” she said. “It’s a savings account – that’s what they’re there for.”

Melt didn’t happen

Loveland also got a hard punch from the storms, rolling up more than $300,000 in costs. Keith Reester, Loveland’s public works director, said “about 85 percent” of that was spent hiring contractors to get rid of the snow. Reester said the city paid $125 per hour for graders and loaders and between $85 and $90 per hour for trucks to haul it away.

Reester said the amount spent was about 10 times what Loveland normally pays for snow removal. “The paradigm in Colorado is we plow major arterials and collector streets and then wait a day or two for the side streets to melt,” he said. “But that didn’t happen this year.”

Reester said he was particularly proud of the fact that Loveland was able to clear the Loveland-Fort Collins Airport and get it back into service earlier than Denver International Airport, which was shut down for about 44 hours after the first storm.

Larimer County’s Lancaster said the county will probably have to make some adjustments to its road maintenance budget this year to offset some of the snow removal expenses. That could mean less maintenance on some roads or fewer seasonal people hired, he said.

Lancaster said the storms’ aftereffects will be felt for a while longer. “I’m sure we’ll have some extra pothole expenses later this spring. There’ll be impacts of (these storms) way beyond the removal of the snow.”