Retailers, Plow Crews Loving It—

Winter’s Fury (So Far) Adds Up To Nearly $500k In Taxpayer Costs

By John Voket

As First Selectman Pat Llodra circulated an update on winter storm costs to her board January 24, the Public Works Department, along with a legion of retailers and service workers who cater to snowbound Newtowners, was gearing up for yet another two-fisted punch from Mother Nature.

The first jab came in the form of what forecasters initially described as a period of snow showers, which actually ended up dumping one to two inches of powdery fluff overnight into Tuesday, glazing roads and slowing traffic to a crawl.

But as Mrs Llodra pointed out, the nor’easter arriving Wednesday promised to be a much more disruptive storm. Accompanied by a winter storm warning, that front was expected to bring in excess of six more inches of wet heavy snow accompanied by 25-mile-per-hour wind gusts and ending by early Thursday morning.

The current $615,000 municipal budget for winter maintenance has already given up more than half of its allocated funds, with the first selectman reporting $353,457 spent so far. But with more than $100,000 reserved from that budget for sand and catch basin cleanup in the spring, and an anticipated request for additional overtime to cover this week’s storms, Public Works Director Fred Hurley said the total storm-related expense will be “approaching a half-million dollars.”

And as Selectman Will Rodgers noted at the Board of Selectmen meeting Monday, there was still about “60 percent more of winter” remaining on the calendar.

The spreadsheet telling part of the tale of Newtown’s challenging, and some say unprecedented, winter of 2010-11, details ten storms going back to a sleet-strewn November 8, when the highway department racked up more than $5,600 in costs just to keep the roads treated with sand and salt. And that was to be the only storm so far that has not dipped into overtime labor costs.

Every subsequent storm since — from the modest Friday afternoon snow on December 10 that required only $572 in OT, to the punishing post-Christmas weekend blizzard December 26–27 that demanded more than $25,000 in OT — has added $92,247 in unscheduled overtime expenses.

The good news, according to Mr Hurley, is that the town is applying for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in the hope of offsetting as much as $149,000 in snow removal and supply costs. That application was due to go out January 26, Mr Hurley said.

The town has also enlisted assistance from contract plow drivers to the tune of $20,000 so far, with the expectation of using more outside help to supplement town crews when and if needed for what Mr Hurley said could be “several more 12- to 18-inch snow events before the end of winter.”

And the public works chief estimated that there were hundreds of other contractors from landscape companies to standalone plow owners who have been working steadily since November for local private and commercial property owners.

At Your Service

Contractors as well as retailers who supply everything from hot chocolate to snow removal have been raking it in as well. Mike Landry at demitasse cafe in Sandy Hook has been selling an “extraordinary amount of hot chocolate and hot beverages,” particularly on the worst of snowy days. And he said he has stayed open extra hours to accommodate patrons who are looking for a warm, temporary oasis from plowing, shoveling, or just traversing Newtown’s snowbound roadways, which had added up to extra revenues.

A representative at Newtown Hardware told The Bee that a recent shipment of 48 snow rakes, which homeowners use to strip stacked snow from rooftops, was gone in a couple of days. And Newtowner John Hughes, who custom mixes environmentally friendly “weather guard pro” ice melting material at his plant in Monroe, has been working steadily since winter’s first hint of precipitation.

“The joke is we’ll catch some sleep in April,” Mr Hughes said laughing. “Right now we’re only using about half of our capacity, so we still have room to meet demands of many more potential customers.”

His company, H&H Processing, offers pickup as well as delivery of his blended, DOT-type ice melt. And to date this winter, he has already delivered hundreds of tons of the material.

Besides the tapping of taxpayer funds, bad news has come as a blizzard of complaints registered after the January 11–13 storm alone — from residents who Mr Hurley said have occasionally registered their displeasure with his crews “rudely and arrogantly.” But the public works chief has defended his workers, reminding them that despite upwards of 500 calls, which began pouring in “less than 15 minutes after the January storm stopped,” there are still 8,500 other property owners who are apparently satisfied with the job the town is doing — or at least satisfied enough to not complain.

Elissa Altman, who resides on a horseshoe-shaped side road in Dodgingtown, contacted The Bee five days after the mid-January storms saying highway department crews had cleared a single lane of passage in her neighborhood, and had not been back.

“No one can control the patterns of the weather; however, as a taxpaying citizen of Newtown, I can — and do — expect Newtown Public Works to plow more than one car’s width in my Dodgingtown neighborhood more than once since last week’s storm dumped 30 inches on my and my surrounding streets [Shut, Flat Swamp, and Cemetery Road],” Ms Altman stated.

Emergency Access Priority

Mr Hurley reminds residents, however, that his first, foremost obligation is to ensure every property owner and resident in town remains accessible to emergency vehicles. The process after that is to systematically begin peeling back layers of roadside buildup to widen roadways — which brings its own problems.

“It’s a Catch-22, because we have the people complaining that we only cleared one lane of their road. And then a few days later as we go back and do the widening they are calling for, we are forced to, in some cases, plow their walks and driveways in, which generates a whole new crop of calls,” Mr Hurley said.

The other issue is the hundreds of cases where roadways were clear and passable, until private plow drivers pushed snow and ice from their customers’ driveways back into the street.

“This caused three or four return trips to a number of our streets,” he explained.

In these cases, Mr Hurley said the Newtown Police have been very cooperative, explaining to homeowners that since they are liable for their plow drivers’ activity, it will be the homeowner who is cited if snow is plowed or removed back into the street.

“The bottom line is that ten hours after a 30-inch snowstorm, Newtown was open for business,” Mr Hurley said. “Not a small achievement.”

And if his observations raise the ire of some winter-weary residents, the public works chief tries to be understanding, because “most of these people have never experienced a winter with storms like this, so it’s an education for them.

“Look, that 30-inch storm, on top of two 12- to 15-inch storms before it left residue that will impact Newtown for weeks,” Mr Hurley added.

For individuals who have lost mailboxes to the weight of snow or the impact of plow driven “smudge,” Mr Hurley reminds them that Newtown is among the last few municipalities in Connecticut that still reimburses homeowners for the cost of replacing the postal receptacles.