Aside from a few short-lived weather events, Toronto’s winter has so far been sorely lacking in the snow department, eating up just seven per cent of the city’s winter maintenance budget over the usually precipitation-rich January — but don’t expect to see officials directing unspent money elsewhere.
Subject to council approval at Wednesday’s budget meeting, the city has set aside $128 million to keep Toronto’s roads, sidewalks and bike paths clear of snow and ice this year.
In mid-February, the City of Toronto told Global News it expected the January snow-clearing cost to come to around $9 million. After tallying the invoices in early March, officials confirmed the total spend on January’s winter maintenance was $26 million — less than 20 per cent of the annual budget.
The final snow-clearing budget the city settled on was $139 million for 2024.
“The weather is unpredictable. We are prepared to deliver the program that people expect of us, regardless of what the weather throws at us,” said Barbara Gray, the city’s general manager of transportation services.
Gray said the city uses various long-range weather models to try to approximate how much snow it will have to contend with each winter. But she’s quick to point out that the city still needs to account for potential blizzards right up to the end of the calendar year. So it’s not something she’s ready to jinx while standing in a bare Nathan Phillips Square.
“I don’t talk about winter until winter’s over,” she said.
While conditions at the moment favour clear roads, a late-season storm or an early snowfall in the fall could throw a wrench in any perceived savings.
“Sometimes we’ve had significant snowstorms in October, we’ve had significant snowstorms in November and multiple events in December,” Gray said.
The head of the city’s infrastructure and environment committee echoed that cautionary approach when it comes to counting your snowflakes before they fall, especially since Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie knows how quickly costs can add up.
“I’m hopeful this year we’ll get through without any of that,” McKelvie said.
The city is still tallying the cost of 2023’s winter, but six of the eight years between 2015 and 2022 came in under budget. Still, the two years that went over budget really went over.
In the six under-budget years, Toronto saved a combined $56.2 million. But just two winters with more active snow production than expected cost the city $47.5 million.
In 2019, a particularly harsh January and February were blamed for the overage, with a year’s worth of snow arriving in about six weeks, on top of significant early snowfalls in November.
From a budgetary standpoint, 2022 was even worse, with a January storm accumulating enough snow to put it in the top 10 snowfalls Toronto has ever experienced.
After a nearly month-long declaration to assist crews in snow clearing, the city had spent more than $17 million — almost 20 per cent of its winter maintenance budget — removing 180,000 tonnes of snow from streets, sidewalks and bike paths.
“Individual storms that dump a lot of snow on the ground and we have to snow removal are quite costly,” Gray said.