Snowfalls cost city up to $72K – each

One or two weeks of steady snowfall is all it takes to wipe out the City of Windsor’s snow removal budget.

According to the City of Windsor, the Public Works’ Operations Department budgets approximately $4 million per year for winter control operations, including snow removal – and $288,000 of this year’s allotment has already been spent to clean up after November’s unexpected blizzard.

“Nobody was ready at all, I worked 23 hours myself,” said Ron Shepley, owner of Coast to Coast Property Maintenance, about the over 24 hour snowfall which took place on Nov. 11. “Manpower is hard to find,” Shepley continued. “I’ve turned down probably 50 calls. They were nonstop.”

Like city workers, private snow removal crews have laws governing how long they can work which caps around 14 hours. If it snows longer than that, the white stuff accumulates.

The City of Windsor maintains a fleet of 21 snow removal vehicles. The city’s main salt paths cover 1,067 kilometres of road. The vehicle operation costs roughly $12,000 per hour to run and the routes take between three to six hours to plow, depending on factors such as snowfall amount and traffic. This means a standard snowfall costs taxpayers between $36,000 and $72,000 to remove.

If snowfall reaches higher than 10 centimetres in height, the City of Windsor also plows secondary and residential streets. According to their website this costs “in excess of $300,000” each time they have to plow. This means a 24 hour snow storm would cost in excess of $600,000  — and seven full days of heavy snowfall would cost more than $4.2 million

While waiting for the snow to be removed, Shepley said one thing is the most important.

“Slow down,” he said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”