Winter hitting GTA road budgets hard but reserves help

Globalnews.ca
March 11, 2014
By James Armstrong

This winter has been abnormally harsh on roads and city budgets.

Both Toronto and Vaughan exceeded their snow clearing budget in 2013 by $1.9 million and $1.3 million, respectively.

But city officials assure taxpayers there won’t be any extra cost to them because of precautionary reserves created over the last decade.

Reserves in both cities are funded by the surplus from previous year’s budgets, should there be any. When a particularly bad winter hits, the city can dip into the reserve fund to cover any extraordinary costs.

“We have approximately $5 million in a winter reserve to handle winters like this,” said Brian Anthony, Vaughan’s director of public works. “So there’s no impact on the taxpayer.”

But in the two-and-a-half months of 2014, Vaughan has already spent nearly 70 per cent of the 2014 budget. So is Anthony worried they’ll go over budget once again? Not really.

“We should have enough,” he said, nothing there’s also a backup reserve fund should the first be depleted.

“If we go beyond that reserve then we would probably be looking at other corporate reserves that would fund it.”

Toronto too has spent just over half of its 2014 road clearing budget as of March 11, with about $40-45 million of the $80 million budget gone.

But Trevor Tenn, manager of road operations in Scarborough, isn’t worried about going over budget for a second year in a row.

“The winter season is really a four month season. In the summer, we’re obviously not doing winter operations,” he said. “We are pretty confident that we will be within budget for this year.”

The city’s budget for winter road operations covers plowing, snow clearing and salting. Tenn suggested it costs approximately $5 million each time the city’s expressways, arterial routes and local roads are plowed.

And a storm set to hit Toronto Wednesday morning could take another bite out of that budget. A special weather statement by Environment Canada warns the region could see between five and 15 centimetres of snow during the approaching storm.