BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
EDISON — Spring arrived on Saturday, right after the area was hit with a sloppy blast of snow and slush late in the season last week.
In the some 26-square-mile township — despite the season’s late storm — officials said expenses for the winter season were not over budget and all 250 miles of roads comprising 2,000 streets were cleared without a problem last week.
"Those late season storms happen," Mayor George Spadoro said. "When they do happen, it’s good to know that our budget was an honest one and the estimates worked out. We are fortunate, too, to have maintained a healthy surplus of more than $5 million — and intentionally so, so that we can weather those rainy and/or snowy days."
But, Spadoro said that as far as he knows, the township has not yet had to dig too far into that surplus to help out with snow removal costs.
So far this year, the township spent $197,452 on snow removal.
Approximately 34 inches of snow have fallen in the local area, according to a nearby weather monitoring station in New Brunswick maintained by the National Weather Service.
The township budgeted $131,000 for worker salaries. The total spent as of Jan. 26, the latest figures officials made available, is $129, 537.
Most of the overtime allotment, or 98.88 percent, had been spent by Jan. 26, leaving $1,462 for any future overtime expenses, which occurred after that date.
Operating expenses were budgeted at $45,250. As of March 22, $67,914 had been spent, leaving the operating and expense budget for snow removal 150 percent over budget .
All that is fine with the mayor, because the township, he said, is fiscally responsible enough to handle the unprojected costs that may creep into the picture once the figures are all added up.
"Our bond rating has also been upgraded," Spadoro said. "Statistically, even though it seemed to drag on, the removal costs are very comparable to those of other winters. We run a tight ship here. We have always been prepared financially and strategically to handle this weather."
In order to weather such storms as the one that hit last week, Edison’s Public Works personnel has divided the town into 38 separate districts, using 38 different types of vehicles with plows to clean up the snow and muck that the weather wrought.
And despite reports earlier in the year of a state shortage of salt, "we were fine," Spadoro said. "We had enough."
As far as outside contractors and associated out-of-the-house costs, Edison hardly has any, Spadoro said.
"Almost all the removal we do is in-house," he added. "There are certain areas we pay special attention to, like the Clara Barton section of town that was revitalized, but we generally reach every corner. That’s why we use various trucks with plows. The smaller trucks, like pickups, can get tight spots like cul-de-sacs and the dump trucks and garbage trucks, which are converted to plows clear the larger areas."
With respect to weather extremes, what hurt most, Spadoro said, was their effect on the roads. The extreme temperature changes wreaked havoc on roads.
The resulting pothole problem is something on which the mayor recently waged war. He intends to attack the problem by dedicating more than $3 million to smooth out the weathered roads in the coming calendar year, he said.