Salt costs dry up suburban towns' budgets

All the bad weather this past winter wound up costing most municipalities almost twice what they planned to spend on road salt.

The news comes during already difficult budget times.

"We know that 2009 is going to be a tough budget year, anyway, and this is just another factor we're going to have to take into account as we tighten our belts," said Aurora Finance Director Brian Caputo.

Already planning to operate this fiscal year at a $3 million deficit, Wheaton's Finance Director Mark Horton took the news in stride that the city spent nearly $100,000 more than anticipated on road salt this past winter.

"You never really make that up," he said. "Those costs get paid out of our reserves. That's what fund balances are for."

All towns have reserves to cover costs of an emergency or financial calamity. Wheaton routinely operates with a fund balance that is equal to 30 percent of its annual expenses. The extra road salt cost is one of the reasons the city will drop its fund balance to 20 percent next year, Horton said.

Besides salt, municipalities are facing additional costs for a variety of things related to the awful winter weather that lasted longer than anyone anticipated -- or wanted.

Naperville budgeted $365,000 for outside contractors to handle snow removal, but it actually paid out $526,000. Combine that overrun with overtime costs associated with the city's own public works employees, an extra $300,000 for road salt and the costs of the additional road work caused by the weather and Naperville's budget could easily take a $1 million hit, Finance Director Doug Krieger said.

"This winter was tougher in terms of salt usage than it was for snow removal because of weather conditions," he said. "That's why you see those numbers so high."

Salt became a hot commodity the longer the season lasted. As winter dragged on, some communities were paying more than three times the price they paid for their original supply.

"We typically paid $42 a ton, but there were some situations at the end where we paid $175 a ton," said Matt Formica, assistant village manager of Grayslake. "I want to say we had to buy about 2,000 tons at that price."

That caused the village's road salt budget to swell from $128,000 to a final tally of $420,000.

However, there were a few towns whose salt supplies managed to weather the weather.

"I still have about 400 tons left over," said Dennis Michaels, Lisle's superintendent of public works. "I was one of the few who never had to reorder, but I also started cutting back in December."

The other option to paying exorbitant prices was to begin cutting the salt with sand to extend the supply.

Jack Krier, Libertyville's superintendent of streets, paid $48,400 for nearly 1,000 tons of sand to make the village's salt supply last longer. It helped some, but it wasn't the salvation he had hoped for. He wound up borrowing salt from neighboring municipalities.

"I still owe Vernon Hills 40 tons and Lake County about 80," he said. "It was worse up here. I saw some figures that showed snowfall in Antioch this winter was 94.8 inches, and Romeoville had 50.5 inches. And we're talking about 38 inches being the average."

It wasn't just about the amount of snow, but how often it seemed to fall.

"We went out 30 times this winter," Addison street foreman Ron Remus said. "I don't think I've done 30 storms in one season in the 32 years I've been here. I don't want to do it again."

The run on salt last season isn't expected to affect prices for the coming winter season, Grayslake's Formica said.

"Even toward the end of the season we started seeing prices come back down because some of the shipping and transportation issues had been resolved," he said.

Caputo, Aurora's finance director, said there's another silver lining.

"We now have a good idea of what a pretty bad year will be in terms of snow removal."