Long winter putting strain on London’s snow removal budget

It looks like the long winter isn’t just impacting Londoners, but the city’s winter road maintenance budget is also taking a hit.

Typically by this time of year, crews have usually moved on to street cleaning, not worrying about salting and sanding roadways like they were this past weekend during the ice storm.

Salt trucks were out on city streets again Tuesday morning.

John Parsons, the city’s manager of transportation and roadside operations, tells 980 CFPL the maintenance budget is about $13.8 million a year.

“We typically spend about 60 per cent of the budget in the first part of the year and then spend about 40 per cent in November and December. We’re already trending a little bit higher in that first part right now,” said Parsons.

“There were certainly more snow events in 2018 than we saw in 2017, so we are bracing ourselves for a strain on the budget, that’s for sure.”

There is a severe weather fund the city can dip into if necessary, like in 2017 when they were about $800,000 over budget thanks to a lot of snow in December.