With no snow to plow, public works crews in the Shawano area are saving money while finding non-traditional winter work to stay busy.
Road salt piles stand nearly untouched, and snowplow trucks are parked indefinitely as the region experiences December weather that feels more like October.
Public works crews, meanwhile, are taking advantage of the unusually mild winter to make progress on such duties as leaf removal, tree trimming and sewer maintenance.
In a typical Wisconsin winter with temperatures dropping and snow piling up, that sort of work generally is impossible in December.
“When the cold hits, we’re cut off,” Shawano Public Works Director Eddie Sheppard said.
This winter, however, has been anything but typical.
According to the National Weather Service in Green Bay, the region normally has 14 inches of snow at this stage of the season. This year, less than a half-inch of snow has fallen.
Low temperatures that usually average 14 degrees daily have scarcely gotten below freezing, averaging 32 degrees instead.
Menominee County highway superintendent Steve Wilke said his road maintenance crews tackled 25 operations for snow and ice removal by this time last year. This year, the crews have seen action only five times, and even those were extremely mild episodes of slick roads.
Wilke said the situation is saving Menominee County taxpayers money in manpower overtime, snowplow fuel and elsewhere.
“We’re saving quite a bit,” he said.
Shawano County has mobilized its snowplow fleet just 11 times this year — down from 33 at the same stage last year — to keep roads from getting slippery when temperatures dip near freezing.
Casey Beyersdorf, operations manager for the county highway department, said the county has barely put a dent in its road salt inventory of 12,000 tons. Beyersdorf cannot remember a more mild winter in the nine years he has been with the county.
“It’s almost like it’s fall and not winter,” he said.
County crews have taken advantage of the mild weather to keep ahead of such tasks as bridge upkeep and ditch maintenance.
“It all needs to get done,” Beyersdorf said.
Savings are accumulating, too, for the city of Shawano, which purchases road salt from the county as needed.
Sheppard said the city budgeted $380,000 for snow removal costs in 2015 and has spent only $192,000 — most of which was spent last January, February and March. This winter season, city snowplow drivers salted local streets for the first time on Tuesday of this week.
City public works crews instead have used the mild winter to catch up on leaf removal from the fall and jump ahead on sewer maintenance and other spring-cleaning type of work.
“We’re able to get some more of that stuff done,” Sheppard said. “It’s been good for us to keep people busy doing other things.”
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