The City of Quesnel has already used up around 64 percent of its snow budget for 2019.
Director of Finance Kari Bolton goes over some of the numbers…
“The snow budget for 2019 is 1 million 7 thousand 944 dollars. At this point, as of today, we’re at 640 thousand. That’s all the invoices we’ve received and are in our system today. There could be more outstanding still for the last few weeks here.”
Bolton says that budget has increased over the years…
“In 2012 it was about 700 thousand and then we’ve slowly increased it over the years. So last year it was 918 thousand and now we’re over a million.”
Bolton says the idea of increasing it is to eventually build up a snow reserve, but mother nature is just not cooperating…
“In 2016 and 2017 we were under budget so we did build up a reserve. It was all used in 2018, because 2018 was over budget quite a bit.”
Getting back to this year, Bolton says it typically does snow more in January, February and March than later in the year, so she feels they are still in range of staying under this year’s budget.
By comparison, the budget for snow removal in 100 Mile House is 176 thousand dollars, about 50 thousand of which has been used, while we’re still waiting for numbers for Williams Lake.