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Politics & Government

County's Snow Removal Costs Top $2 Million

County tab for snow removal cleared county roads, parking lots and sidewalks

 “Everyone should be thinking warm thoughts,’’ Ocean County Administrator Carl W. Block said, looking over mounting snow removal bills that are approaching $2.5 million.

“We’re past $2 million and heading for $3 million,’’ he said after reviewing reports from Road Supervisor Stephen F. Childers on the cost of clearing 620 miles of county roads of snow that has fallen repeatedly since Dec. 26.

“We’re going to exceed last year,’’ in snow removal spending, he said. “It’s only Feb. 14, if you recall several years ago the biggest snowfall we had was on President’s Weekend — next weekend,’’ he said.

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This week’s warm temperatures are still working to melt snow that fell a month and a half ago.

The administrator said about 80 percent of the cost of clearing the roads is spent by the Road Department, and most of that, $1.574 million, went for salt and brine used to melt snow and ice.

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 Nearly all the plow crews worked on overtime because of the timing of the storms, at a cost of $353,000, he said.

 Still to be calculated is a storm-by-storm broadsheet of the cost of dealing with each storm, he explained. That will include the sums spent by the county’s Vehicle Services Department for fuel and parts of county equipment, expenses of the county’s Buildings and Grounds Department in clearing parking lots and sidewalks, equipment and manpower from the Parks Department, and sums paid contractors who helped plow.

The county is seeking reimbursement for some of the $886,000 costs of dealing with the biggest of the snowstorms, the one on Dec. 26. That money may come from the federal government because the acting governor declared a state of emergency because of the severity of that storm.

“Not everything’s reimbursable,’’ Block said. Where no emergency was declared no reimbursement is possible, he said.

The snow blow to the county’s finances is expected to be felt especially hard this year as the freeholders work to create a budget for 2011, one Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. has already described as “the most difficult ever,’’ due to a sinking county tax ratable base and the national recession.

Bartlett has been a freeholder since 1980.

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