Snow removal will be in the red this year in Williams Lake.
“We had a lot of snow earlier on in the year so we actually are sitting at about $100,000 over budget for 2018 and it’s projected that we will be $300,00 by the end of December,” said Director of Municipal Services, Gary Muraca.
“Unfortunately snow removal is a service level and we have to maintain it so we have to a find another way to fund the overages.”
The $300,000 shortfall according to Muraca is based on last year’s numbers and while will not be easy to address does not mean that they will be able to stop snowplowing.
He says that they usually budget $750,000 per year for snow removal.
“We budget that amount and that usually hits on seventy to eighty percent of the years, but the odd year where you get a heavy snowfall as we did earlier in the year you’re going to be over and you have to find a way to accommodate that.”
“That’s why in slower years or less snowfall years you create reserves so when you have a heavier year you can cover those.”
Muraca says service levels this winter will be the same as last year.
“We are running the same equipment and we’ve got a couple new trucks, but other than that it’s going to be the same operations as last year,” he said.
“I think things went very well. I think we usually get about 1.3 meters of snow a year in Williams Lake and in February alone we got 85 centimeters so we were hit pretty hard here earlier on this year and we got through it. It took a little bit of time to catch up at sometimes, but we just got to keep plugging away when we get those type of snowfalls.”
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