Plowing, road salt eating up budgets

Communities hit by soaring costs

Sidewalk plows at the Danvers Department of Public Works yard are poised to go to work on the next snowstorm. (Globe Staff Photo / Mark Wilson)

If you are anxious about those after-holiday bills, consider the plight of local highway department supervisors.

They've just slogged through one of the snowiest Decembers on record while shouldering steep increases in road salt and fuel prices. Many have nearly plowed through their entire annual budgets for snow and ice removal - and winter is just getting started.

"We are close to exhausting our money," said Jay Fink, the Public Works commissioner in Lynn.

Fink has asked the City Council for permission to exceed his $785,000 snow budget, and many highway directors say they are all too familiar with that request.

A quirk in state laws allows communities to run deficits in their annual snow removal budgets as long as they pay back the shortfall in the next tax year. But highway chiefs say the practice of running in the red has become so ingrained that many communities routinely and substantially underestimate their snow- and ice-removal budgets.

Yet going back and asking for seconds is much tougher than it used to be because most communities have little to spare. Soaring health, pension, and energy costs, combined with declining state aid, have left cupboards bare.

In Lynn, for instance, an unexpected $1.8 million spike in workers' compensation claims forced a cutback in all departments last month. But cutting the snow budget was not an option, Fink said.

"If we don't take care of our streets, we put residents and taxpayers at greater liability," he said. "You are in a catch-22."

Plowing snow is expensive, but having to haul it away is even pricier. That's what some communities faced after back-to-back snowstorms shortly before Christmas. In Melrose, crews needed 33 dump trucks, working 11 hours straight, to remove the mountains of snowbanks in the city's normally pedestrian-friendly downtown.

"The snowbanks were so high, it couldn't take another storm," said Bob Beshara, the city's DPW superintendent. "It was the big weekend before Christmas, so we made the choice to do it rather than risk being hit with a big storm and being in trouble."

Beshara said that one 11-hour marathon cost his department about $60,000. His $200,000 snow budget is nearly gone.

Up in Newbury, the snow fund was nearly $3,000 in the hole heading into the final weekend of the year.

"This year is looking grim," said the town accountant, Catherine Gabriel. "And January and February have lots of ice."

Which brings up the sore subject of road salt. Acquiring the coveted commodity, shipped from as far away as South America, has eaten holes through many communities' budgets. The price has soared as worldwide demand has skyrocketed, said Bill Creighton, general manager of Granite State Minerals, based in Portsmouth, N.H., which is one of the region's major salt suppliers.

Salt is one of the most heavily used compounds in global manufacturing. Demand in rapidly growing countries, such as China and India, combined with the costs of fuel for shipping it, have translated into eye-popping price increases. Boxford and 18 other local communities, from Merrimac to Manchester-by-the-Sea, that buy salt together in a consortium have weathered a 36 percent price increase since 2004. And that was on top of a 25 percent hike the year before.

"You may want to sit down before reading [this]," Kathy Carleton wrote on the cover sheet of this season's salt-bid prices to the consortium's members.

Carleton, a Boxford staffer, administers the consortium's contracts. The consortium was paying $36.04 a ton for road salt in the winter of 2004-2005. This year's accepted bid for the same product was $48.90.

Suppliers believed the salt situation would ease when demand from China and other rapidly growing countries declined. If anything, it's gotten worse, with unrelenting demand for salt and other materials creating a shortage of ships, Creighton said.

"These countries need ships so badly, they are willing to pay very high rates for ships, and everyone gets caught up in that," he said.

Some communities have fared slightly better than others. Salisbury, for instance, has only spent about half of its budget for snow and ice removal, said DPW director Donald R. Levesque. That's still above the norm for this time of year, when the department usually would have spent about 40 percent of its allotment, he said. With 38 years of public works experience under his belt, however, Levesque knows it is way too soon to let his guard down.

"Some of the worst storms I've dealt with are in March, when it snows and it's still a little warm. The catch basins get plugged up. So you've got to deal with water issues, too.

"Our budget is OK now, but we could go south very fast."

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.