Despite a couple of winter storms in December, municipal officials believe they will be under budget when it comes to snow removal in 2017.
Chatham-Kent's winter control budget for 2017 is $4.73-million.
"But I suspect we are not going to be over $4.7-million," says Miguel Pelletier, director of Public Works for Chatham-Kent. "The reason being is that before the month of December, last year and then January, February, and March, we had pretty light months. So before December started we had a lot of room in the budget."
But Pelletier says major storms can have a huge impact.
"For a 20 cm snowstorm in 24 hours, that costs around $500,000," he says. "So I would say that we had about three big snow events there [in December], that quickly adds up to over $1-million."
Pelletier explains how he sets the budget from year to year.
"When we establish the budget, I look at the data back to 2000 and how much we actually spend and then I come up with the trend. There are many factors that impact winter control, the weather, the price of fuel, the price of salt, and how much overtime we have to do. There are lot of variables."
Pelletier says the final exact number for December won't be available until next month.