Dealing With Blizzard Cost Village $38,000

The Feb. 2 blizzard, which dumped nearly 20 inches of snow on Chicagoland, seems like a distant memory now.

But removing all that snow from the streets of cost a pretty penny, and the village is still tallying up that total.

Director Mike Pubentz said Friday that clearing the streets during and after the blizzard cost about $38,000, with $8,000 of that going to overtime for Pubentz’ nine-member staff.

That staff is supposed to stand at 11, Pubentz said, but with one employee on medical leave and one position still unfilled, the department is undermanned. Within 24 hours of the snow falling on Tuesday the 2nd, though, Pubentz said all main roads in the village had single-lane passage.

By Thursday midnight, he said, the storm had been substantially cleared away. Pubentz said his office did receive several complaints during the snowstorm, and tried to respond to them. But he said he is generally happy with the way the snow removal was handled.

“I feel good about our response, about what we were able to do,” Pubentz said.

Pubentz was not certain Friday how the $38,000 cost stacks up to other storms in the past, but he said the amount of overtime paid will not break the bank. He is still within his annual overtime budget, he said.

And there is a chance the village could recoup some of those costs. Kane County was declared a disaster area during the storm, and Pubentz has submitted 50 percent of his costs to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (and through them, the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to see what assistance he can get.

Roughly half of the village of Montgomery is in Kane County, with the other half in Kendall. Kendall County was not declared a disaster area. Pubentz said the village does not tally up costs of overtime per snowstorm unless there’s a chance of reinbursement, as there is here.

Pubentz also said the village did not drop much salt onto the roads during the blizzard, and supplies remain high.

“We continue to look cautiously toward future snow removal operations of this magnitude,” he said.