This mild winter has been good for both residents, and municipal pocketbooks.
Manager of Public Works for the City of Dieppe David Knowles says they haven’t been running 24/7 day after day as they were last year.
He says they saved $350,000 in comparison to last year by this time.
“Our overtime budget is quite a bit less, last year at the end of February we had spent 109% of our operating overtime budget, so 9% over budget already after two months,” says Knowles. “This year we’ve only spent 25% of that overtime budget.”
He says they’ve also had significant savings in other areas as well.
“This year we’ve spent $54,000 less in fuel, and equipment rentals, dump trucks and dozers and whatnot for the transportation of snow we’re down almost $220,000 less,” says Knowles.
He adds the down time has been good for staff and equipment too.
“Equipment is not getting beat up as bad, plowing in a municipality is very hard on equipment with curbs, and sidewalks and manholes, a lot of obstructions that we can’t see a lot of the time and it does cause damage to the equipment,” says Knowles.
Dieppe is not alone, with the City of Moncton Chief Financial Officer John Martin saying they’ve saved $1.79 million in the first two months of 2016.
Riverview has not gotten back to us about their numbers for this year.
