Snow removal efforts in Soldotna got a $100,000 boost last week, when city council members approved additional funding to keep the streets department going through the end of winter.
Soldotna Streets and Maintenance Manager Scott Sundberg wrote in a Dec. 30 memo to City Manager Stephanie Queen that the mid-December storm resulted in more than $47,300 in trucking fees in addition to 145 hours of overtime for staff. That storm, which dropped as much as 2 feet of snow on the peninsula, took Soldotna street crews 11 days to get rid of city berms, he wrote.
“Our plan has worked out really well so far this winter, until the last storm buried everyone and everything,” Sundberg wrote. “The snow event was the biggest snowfall Soldotna has seen in a long time and it definitely came with a cost. We did 6 long days of hauling on the biggest berms I’ve seen to date.”
At the end of December, Sundberg said the department was already more than $27,000 over their $100,000 budget for snow removal, with “a long way to go” until spring. Total snow removal costs during the first three months of 2022, he said, tallied more than $111,000.
Council members voted unanimously to give the department an additional $100,000 from the general fund for snow removal.
Reach reporter Ashlyn O’Hara at ashlyn.ohara@peninsulaclarion.com.
