Facilities Management, county road commission work through snowstorm
Students may have rejoiced Wednesday morning to the news of class cancellations, but workers with the Isabella County Road Commission and CMU Facilities Management department had their hands full.
FM landscape operations had 20 people working through the storm, including five retirees. Crews worked in shifts Tuesday evening, Wednesday and Thursday.
“Every storm is different, but this is the worst storm since I joined CMU in 2003,” said Steve Lawrence, associate vice president of Facilities Management.
This week's storm was more challenging than most because of the high winds and drifting, he said. Also challenging was the reduced effectiveness of salt because of cold temperatures.
The road commission faced those same challenges while maintaining the streets of Mount Pleasant.
“On the primary roads, the blacktop ones, we would plow but two hours later they would drift shut again,” said Tony Casali, county road commission manager. “Subdivision and gravel (roads) were very difficult to drive because we were working on the main roads so much.”
The commission worked 10- and 12-hour days during the storm and after, Casali said.
Isabella County plows 16 townships, each with its own truck. The road commission also owns motor graders and a tow truck.
The university maintains four-and-a-half miles of roads, 29 miles of sidewalks and 92 acres of parking lots, Lawrence said.
Though FM does not yet know how much the snow removal operations will cost, it spent $73,267 in labor costs for the winter in the 2008-09 school year. That does not include salt and other expenses.
Casali estimated in one day of the storm, the county spent $12,000 in fuel costs alone.
The road commission’s budget for this year is $900,000, but the budget has to be stretched much thinner with the cost of fuel and salt rising.
“With costs we have to watch overtime and how we tackle the storms," Casali said. "It’s really critical when positioning ourselves to use manpower wisely."
The commission felt it had a fairly mild start to winter. Going into this week's storm, it was on target with its budget, Casali said.
"We had used half of the budget and we're halfway through winter," Casali said. “We were looking fairly good, but if this continues we may not be in such great shape"
