EDMONTON – At one time, city council was expecting an overall surplus for 2013’s budget. However, serious snow events may have eaten away at the year’s surplus.
This past year saw several big snow events, especially at the beginning and end of 2013.
In fact, all the winter weather has put the 2013 snow removal budget over by about $19 million, council heard on Wednesday.
“Luckily, there was a surplus, a generous surplus, that we can charge this against,” said Iveson. “So hopefully, we’ll come out even for the year in spite of the overdraft for snow.”
Despite the extra spending, council was told the overall budget may not dip into the red.
“They’re just talking about a $19 million overrun in the snow budget offsetting savings we’ve had in other areas and coming in around par,” Iveson explained.
“The fact that they’ve been able to manage a $19 million over expenditure for snow and not looking at a $19 million deficit is really, really good news.”
“It would have been nice if we’d had a surplus. I think council was interested in putting some of those dollars into roadway maintenance, for example.”
Initial numbers suggested the city could see a surplus in the neighbourhood of $13.1 million. Now, any additional funds will have to cover the extra snow expenses.
“It would have been nice if we had surplus,” said Councillor Amarjeet Sohi, who mused about putting some extra funds towards the ground and pave program. “Then that would have been much easier to allocate that money to fixing the roads.”
“So, we need to find other funding sources. This is work that has to be done.”
READ MORE: City of Edmonton could remove snow faster but are you willing to pay the extra cost?
Council won’t have the final budget numbers until the books are closed in about a month’s time.
Edmonton Snow & Ice Budgets:
2014: $53.2M
2013: Actual: $70.0M
Budgeted: $51.9M
2012: Actual: $55.4M
Budgeted: $52.6M
2011: Actual: $73.6M
Budgeted: $47.3M
2010: Actual: $36.9M
Budgeted: $44.4M
“The challenge is, we budget for a typical year,” said Iveson. “Now, we never actually have a typical winter, but we budget for whatever that average might be,” Iveson explained.
He added that spending money on handling winter wallops isn’t something Edmontonians generally complain about.
“No one is upset that we spent it on snow removal.”
However, Iveson noted that if snow trends change, and removing it consistently becomes more costly, council will have to look at changing the annual snow removal budget.
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