Less snowfall in Mount Pleasant lowers removal cost; state battles costs for its roads

• Tweet
• 

With less snow comes fewer snow removal constraints for the city of Mount Pleasant.

The city has budgeted about $256,000 for snow removal this year, with $130,000 of that going toward snow removal on “major” streets, such as Preston Road, Broomfield Road and Pickard Street. That number is up from last year’s budgeted $116,440.

Duane Ellis, the city’s director of public works, said snowfall amounted to about four feet in December 2008 — much more precipitation than recent snowfalls indicate. The smaller amount of snow has helped reprieve some of the city’s costs, he said.

“This year has been a more normal year, as far as snowfall goes,” he said. “Last year, it was a little bit tight, but we didn’t do too bad last year.”

The city gets its funding for roads through Act 51, Ellis said, which redistributes the taxes taken on gasoline around the state to municipalities. While he believes revenue from the state has decreased, Ellis said the way funds are distributed has not changed in recent years.

“As far as we know, it has not been a drastic amount,” he said. “Revenue from that has held up pretty well.”

Ellis said the city has six trucks that leave in pairs on three different plow routes. He said the city focuses on the major roads first, including those the city oversees through campus. Then, workers move to the local, more residential roads. He said downtown roadways are plowed along with major roads because of the lack of places to put the snow.

As a rule of thumb, Ellis said if snowfall in the city exceeds three inches, the plows are sent out. If it is less, the city can salt some or all of the roads.

While the city clears the main roads in town, it does not take care of two of them — Mission Street, and High Street west of Mission and Pickard Road east of Mission. These roads are state-controlled and are cleared by the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Mission and High are Priority II roads, meaning the state clears one drivable path in each direction during a snow storm. The state does not use overtime to plow Priority II roads, said Anita Richardson, communications representative for MDOT’s Bay region.

“The objective is to make the road passable,” she said. “We’re just not going to clear the pavement on those blue routes until after the snowstorm.”

Richardson said MDOT is battling costs, and that the department is starting to have reduced purchasing power.