With the big freeze on, winter’s been putting the squeeze on — and the town budget’s feeling it.
“We’ve just about hit the limit of our budget,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi said Tuesday afternoon, with yet another snowstorm bearing down on the town. “And we need to begin doing an inventory of other areas and sources of funding that we can freeze.”
Snow removal costs have exceeded $434,000 this year, Mr. Marconi said — and that’s before this week’s storms are accounted for.
Snow storm expenses show up in several different Highway Department budget lines, from materials to overtime.
“The overtime account it going to be the big one,” Mr. Marconi said.
At Tuesday night’s Board of Selectmen meeting, Controller Kevin Redmond said it looked as if the town had exceeded the overtime allocation.
“I have we’re at $122,000 through Jan. 29,” he said. “And we budgeted $120,000.”
In addition to the town workers who drive plow trucks, the town also hires outside plowing contractors.
There are 11 contractors with their trucks and plows; they pay their own gas, and the town pays them a rate of about $75 an hour, Mr. Marconi said.
That cost is about $44,000 so far this year, he said.
Mechanics working storm-related overtime have cost more than $17,000, according to Mr. Marconi.
Costs for the salt product the town puts on the roads are running at about is $287,000 so far this year, Mr. Marconi said.
The product is called “Ice B’Gone” and town officials say it works well.
“It’s salt, but treated with a by-product of molasses that helps lower its effective temperature,” Mr. Marconi said.
“Regular salt works to 24, 26 degrees. With this additive it brings it down well into the low teens,” Mr. Marconi said. “It’s much more effective,”
The cost of the product is $90 a ton, and the town has bought more than 3,000 tons of it.
“Sand, we were paying $26 a ton, delivered, and then we had to mix it with salt,” Mr. Marconi said.
The Ice B’Gone treatment involves no sand, so the town saves about $100,000 a year by not having to do a spring road sweeping to remove the sand it was putting down all winter.
A few years ago when Connecticut towns first started using the salt-sugar product, state environmental officials looked on it quite favorably. Highway departments were no longer polluting the environment with road sand, the environmental officials thought.
But they’re starting to have doubts.
“Now, everyone saying ‘What’s the salt going to do to our water table?’ ” Mr. Marconi said.
The town will soon be sending two employees to Hartford for a seminar on the subject, Mr. Marconi said.
The town has also has concerns that the new product may speed the deterioration of road pavement.
At Tuesday night’s board meeting, Selectwoman Di Masters wondered about the effect on other property.
“I’m unaccustomed to washing my car to get the salt off,” she said. “There are going to be such rusty cars!”
Mr. Marconi, meantime, wondered about the effect this winter may have on all the pavement the roads are made of.
“With the extreme cold, when this frost comes out, who knows what these roads are going to look like,” he said.
Mr. Marconi said will meet with Controller Kevin Redmond in the next few days about the town’s rapidly eroding budget for winter snow removal.
“Put a plan together,” he said, “See what accounts we’ll have to freeze to be sure we have enough money.
“We’re fast approaching the end — a couple of more storms,” Mr. Marconi said.
“If we need another $100,000 or $200,000, where’s it going to come from?”