The snow hasn’t even melted from the ground yet, but another round is expected for Tuesday night. The winter weather comes at a major cost for cities.
The city of Topeka gave KSNT News a breakdown of those costs.
The city has a public works budget of about $51.54 million. Funding for snow cleanup comes from the city’s street maintenance budget which is under that department. They have about $18.94 million to work with this year.
So far in 2019, the city has used $788,946 from that budget, but that’s before Tuesday’s snowstorm.
City Manager Brent Trout said the cost for each snow storm goes up when city workers treat the residential streets in addition to main streets and side streets. He told KSNT News the last time they treated neighborhood roads it was an additional cost of about $71,000.
The street maintenance budget covers not only snow removal and treatment but also the city’s other street projects year round. That means the budget has to go towards things like potholes and road improvements as well.