Colorado Springs spent $400,000+ on recent winter storms

It took several weeks to pull the numbers together but on Wednesday Colorado Springs officials revealed the cost of the city’s response to two winter storms that produced a foot or more of snow.

Corey Farkas, manager of the city’s Streets Division, said the city spent $437,000 on materials, labor and overtime.

“It was our biggest storm in 19 years,” he said.

Farkas said the cost of response and cleanup during the six-day storm event includes materials such as sand and deicer, as well as $78,000 in overtime for employees.

“We typically don’t budget for such a big storm,” he said. “We spent more a third of our $1.1 million materials budget. But we use most of that in January and February anyway.”

Farkas said plowing and removing so much snow was the biggest challenge.

“Normally, we don’t plow downtown,” he said. “But this time we had to because of the amount of snow and the problems it caused.”

Farkas said most of the work to remove ice accumulations and unclog drainage inlets is finished.

“We can handle another storm like that one, if we get it this season,” he said. “We’ve had to order some more materials but our inventory looks good.”

Farkas said crews occasionally become discouraged when hearing public criticism but overall they have a good attitude and are always ready to work hard and do their jobs well.