{"id":7988,"date":"2014-09-04T00:11:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T04:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7988"},"modified":"2014-09-17T15:23:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T19:23:34","slug":"more-money-needed-to-combat-snow-when-it-starts-to-fly-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/more-money-needed-to-combat-snow-when-it-starts-to-fly-this-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"More money needed to combat snow when it starts to fly this fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be news to anyone, with the possible exception of snowbirds, but this past winter was one of the most challenging in recent memory \u2013 and Aurora is still paying the cost for bearing Mother Nature\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n

With far more weather \u201cincidents\u201d than what were anticipated during the 2014 Budget cycle, Councillors are set this week to approve a $225,000 budget increase to the 2014 Winter Maintenance program just to get through to the end of 2014.<\/p>\n

In a recommendation coming forward to General Committee this week, Ilmar Simanovskis, Aurora\u2019s Director of Infrastructure and Environmental services, says this budget increase will, if approved by Council, come out of Aurora\u2019s tax rate stabilization reserve.<\/p>\n

Further recommendations also cover new contracts for plowing roads and sidewalks through the next seven years. <\/p>\n

When Council last met in mid-August, ensuring the municipality had enough salt, sand, and equipment on the roads to get the Town through another harsh winter relatively unscathed was a key topic when reviewing budget shortfalls. Money set aside for the Department of Infrastructure was just over $565,000 overbudget, over half of which could be attributed to greater-than-anticipated snowfalls. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs you might imagine, we have had a number of additional events,\u201d said Mr. Simanovskis, responding to questions from Councillor Michael Thompson, about the budget discrepancy. \u201cWe see 40 or 45 events a year, [but] we had over 60 events this year. An event is essentially any time that we have had to go out and cover the Town, whether it is salt-sand application or plowing. One storm might require two actual rounds, and those are the primary drivers for those cost increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional costs came from managing facilities due to the \u201ccolder than usual\u201d winter. Keeping everything working drove energy costs up, he added.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have any money to actually do any sanding and snowplowing this fall,\u201d Mr. Simanovskis concluded, following further questions from Councillor John Gallo on variances. \u201cBecause the winter program is split between two years, we spent the bulk of the money from January into April and then from November to December. We have spent everything up until the April period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of the Infrastructure Department, the Town\u2019s overall financial picture is looking up, according to staff. In a second report, Town Treasurer Dan Elliott said they forecast a year-end surplus of nearly $420,000, stemming from \u201coverall greater than anticipated revenues\u201d driven by activities in the 2C Development, which will bring thousands of new homes and commercial developments to Aurora, as well as \u201cgeneral operational savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading up to last month\u2019s failure of the long-proposed snow dump for Lambert Willson Park, which fell on a tie vote, snow and what to do with it, had provided some cool thoughts around the Council table during the long summer weeks. <\/p>\n

According to Bill Thompson of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA), plans are underway to look at ways to whittle \u201cbroad-based Provincial objectives\u201d of snow and salt management down to \u201clocally specific\u201d recommendations for all communities living on and around tributaries flowing into Lake Simcoe. This culminated in a sub-watershed management plan for the east Holland River, which flows through Aurora, but more plans are under review.<\/p>\n

The Conservation Authority, he said, needs to work with their municipal partners to develop ways to monitor meltwater going into the streams, reducing reliance on storm water management ponds with an eye towards more permeable pavement and other solutions, and how to mitigate the effects of road salt. <\/p>\n

While Mr. Thompson said he and the LSRCA supported what was before Council last month as a \u201ccomprehensive\u201d plan, he added more work needs to be done for \u201cpublic education around the proper use of salt\u201d as well as mapping areas in and around Aurora that are particularly \u201cvulnerable\u201d to the use of road salt. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re finding essentially sea water coming off the stones at those sites because it is a very concentrated source,\u201d said Mr. Thompson of a snow disposal site in Newmarket, which was releasing what he described as \u201csurprisingly high levels\u201d of chloride into the environment. \u201cIt is something we need to address going forward and we\u2019re just at the early stages of identifying the way forward on that issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It won\u2019t be news to anyone, with the possible exception of snowbirds, but this past winter was one of the most challenging in recent memory \u2013 and Aurora is still paying the cost for bearing Mother Nature\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-24Q","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-11 06:22:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}