Mother Nature’s dreary, dragging winter is hitting up the city for almost $55,000.
Derby Public Works Director Ron Culmo asked the city’s tax board Wednesday for $10,000 to cover overtime costs connected to clearing the streets. The Board of Apportionment and Taxation moved the money from a sanitation account into Culmo’s overtime budget account.
Culmo’s budget also received $44,750 to cover outstanding bills owed to sand and salt suppliers.
Culmo’s crews have been zipping through its sand and salt supplies. Culmo estimated they dumped about 200 yards of the stuff during the last storm. As of Wednesday night, Derby had just 200 yards of sand and salt in its DPW yard on Coon Hollow Road.
The National Weather Service is calling for snow Thursday night and into the weekend.
Culmo said his crews have been called out 21 times this season to deal with ice-coated roads. There have been 20 snowstorms.
Last year the DPW was called out for icy roads 24 times and there were 14 snowstorms, Culmo said.
The problem this year is the Chinese water torture nature of this season’s storms.
“They’ve been ongoing, light snow, all day long,” Culmo said. “We sand the streets, plow off an inch or two of snow, everything ices up, we have to sand again.”
Culmo said he’s been trying to save money by acting as a radio dispatcher during the storms, sending his regular dispatcher out in a snow plow.
Culmo also said he’s been trying to be conservative with sand distribution by concentrating on hills and intersections.
“The problem is 60 percent of Derby is hills,” Culmo said.
“And the rest are intersections,” said Phil Robertson, the city’s chief administrative officer, who was in the audience.
The board voted unanimously to grant Culmo’s requests.
