A mild 2016, and very little snow in the winter months at either end of the year led to substantial savings on snow removal in Airdrie.

According to Mike Avramenko, Roads Team Lead for the city of Airdrie, they're still doing calculations for the year, but snow removal definitely came in under budget.  

"If you remember in the first quarter of 2016 we had a relatively mild winter and then October and November were really mild so there was some savings in the snow and ice budget, likely running over the $200,000 mark."

Avramenko says council will decide what to do with the surplus, but normally it's put into a snow and ice reserve.

So far for 2017, the city looks to be right on budget.  Avramenko pointed out that the city typically budgets around $1.3 million for snow removal, or just over $200,000 a month for the snow removal period.

"Because we had that long cold spell and used quite a bit of traction material, we would probably be a little bit higher in mid-month versus the end of the month, then it kind of rounded itself off, so we're really close to where we should be after the first month."

The job of snow removal is a round the clock endeavour during the winter months.  The city has seven sanding units, three graders and two loaders.  We pretty much put our people on the road as soon as it starts to snow," Avramenko noted.  

Although Airdrie looks to be on track with it's 2017 snow removal budget, that could change at the drop of.....several inches of snow!  As Avramenko points out, "you never know, it's southern Alberta."

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