Snow is many things.
\nAnnoying to some who can\u2019t get to work and a good thing for kids who want a day off school, but to road crews and local governments, it means long hours and extra costs.
\nThe crews in Snyder and Antis townships and Tyrone and Bellwood boroughs have been working since the first flakes of snow started hitting early Sunday morning.
\n\u201cAll of our roads are better than the state roads,\u201d said Joe Mengel, Snyder Township road foreman. \u201cWe have salt on all the hills and turns. We have been pretty much out there since the storm started. We have put in 31 extra hours on the roads since Sunday.\u201d
\n\u201cOur roads are open and clear,\u201d said Antis Township Supervisor Ray Amato. \u201cWe have had crews on 12 hour shifts \u2013 eight regular hours and four overtime hours, We\u2019ve been giving our guys rest between shifts. The roads are cindered and salted and our crews were out at 4 a.m. today.\u201d
\n\u201cOur roads are always better than most places,\u201d said Bellwood Borough secretary Susan Waite. \u201cOur road crews have been working hard since the storm hit. Yesterday wasn\u2019t a holiday for Bellwood borough and there wasn\u2019t holiday overtime.\u201d
\nThe cost of snow removal has also hit the local municipalities.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re looking at between $5,000 and $7,000 for this storm alone,\u201d said Amato.
\n\u201cSo far this winter, we have spent 46 percent of our salt budget and 25 percent of our anti-skid budget,\u201d said Snyder Township secretary Viola Dysart. \u201cThis storm cost the township $26,000 between salt, anti-skid cinders and overtime wages.\u201d
\nBellwood Borough reported the cost in wages for plowing and clearing the roads during this storm is just under $1,500.
\nTyrone Borough didn\u2019t respond to inquires placed by The Daily Herald.
\n Even before the storm dumped two feet of snow on Pennsylvania highways, the state was running over its snow-clearing budget by $7 million, said Rich Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
\nWhile Philadelphia had plenty of salt in reserve to combat wintery weather, supplies were tighter in the Pittsburgh, Scranton and Harrisburg regions, Kirkpatrick said. PENNDOT recently received an additional 80,000 tons of salt, and the state is likely to break its salt-use record of 1.1 million tons set during the 2000-01 winter.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve used over 700,000 tons across the state so far,\u201d Kirkpatrick said. \u201cIt looks like we\u2019re on track to break that record this year.\u201d
\nPennsylvania budgeted $163 million for winter services from the agency\u2019s maintenance budget of $1 billion. Kirkpatrick said the winter services budget was running at around $170 million before the storm hit.
\nWhile state taxpayers won\u2019t have to worry about footing the bill, PennDOT will likely have to tighten its belts later to compensate for the spending.
\n\u201cWe may not be able to do everything we wanted to do in spring maintenance. We can\u2019t run a deficit,\u201d Kirkpatrick said.
\nEditor\u2019s Note: Associated Press Writer Judy Lin contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Snow is many things. Annoying to some who can\u2019t get to work and a good thing for kids who want a day off school, but to road crews and local governments, it means long hours and extra costs. The crews in Snyder and Antis townships and Tyrone and Bellwood boroughs have been working since the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}