Wimpy winter saves Minneapolis and St. Paul a (small) pile of snow spending

The 2023-2024 winter that wasn’t featured no snow emergencies in either Minneapolis or St. Paul and few days where plowing or salting was necessary.

So taxpayers saved a ton of money, right?

Sort of.

The actual dollar savings weren’t as much as you might think, but public works officials from both cities say there are other benefits for the public, primarily in the form of smoother, cleaner streets.

“Sure, we spent less money on overtime and salt, but we spent more money on other things like street sweeping and pothole patching,” said Joe Paumen, director of transportation maintenance and repair for Minneapolis.

Public works folks know the public might assume their crews were goofing around all winter with nothing to do. St. Paul even made a cheeky video featuring workers snowboarding down a pile of unused road salt. But in truth, officials say there was plenty of work to do, and the question of where all the snow money went carries a nuanced answer.

Here are several takeaways from the wimpy winter.

The last time we had a winter without a snow emergency in either city was the winter of 2011-12. And that was a big deal. You have to go back to 1986-87 to find a snow-emergency-free Minneapolis winter before that, according to city records.

Roughly speaking, each snow emergency costs Minneapolis about $1 million and costs St. Paul between $660,000 and $800,000. Most of that money is spent on overtime pay for plow drivers.

But those drivers aren’t simply plow drivers: They’re mostly year-round city employees who work in an all-hands-on-deck/keep-plowing-’til-it’s-done scenario when a snow emergency is declared. When they’re not plowing, they’re still on the cities’ payrolls, doing their normal jobs.

One thing they did this year in Minneapolis — practice.

“We’ve had staffing challenges like everyone else,” Paumen said. “The lack of snow gave us more time to mentor and train new hires so they can learn their routes. This is more important than people realize. You have to know where those concrete medians are so you don’t do damage — because you can’t always see them in a storm.”

Here’s the thing about snow spending: The cities budget for the calendar year, but the snow season straddles two years. So it gets a little complicated.

The money “not spent” from November and December was actually already gone — spent in early 2023.

You remember the winter of 2022-23 (just last year)? It was a whopper of a snowfest.

For example, in calendar year 2023, Minneapolis budgeted $11.8 million for snow expenses. It spent $13.1 million, most of which was spent plowing the near-record storms of January, February and March of 2023.

So from a taxpayer standpoint, it was a relief that this winter started out meekly. (This serendipity isn’t unique; the nearly snowless winter of 2011-12 also followed a brutal winter. In 2010-11, eight emergencies were declared in Minneapolis.)

So far this calendar year, the cities are running well under budget for snow. Minneapolis’ 2024 budget allocates $13.6 million, but the city had only spent $2.2 million before the storm that hit in late March. But whether that extra money remains will depend on what the weather does in October, November and December.

Sean Kershaw, St. Paul’s director of public works, said residents shouldn’t expect city coffers to be overflowing with unspent cash from one light season.

“It certainly evens out,” Kershaw said. “We tend to budget on an average snowfall. The problem is, ‘average’ is changing. We will never not plow because of budget. The budget is what it is, in terms of the cost. And certainly, this year we didn’t have to spend as much money on salt, we didn’t have to spend as much money on overtime.”

Kershaw said most of the money saved probably went to pay for street light copper wire theft, which is another conversation. ”But certainly, last winter was more expensive than this winter.”

If there is extra money from plowing, that money will typically revert back to a city’s general fund, where it can be spent on paving, fixing or installing street lights or whatever the City Council and mayor decide.

As for extra salt — and there are mountains of extra salt in both cities right now — it can just sit in covered sheds for the summer.

Have you noticed that the streets aren’t as grungy as they normally are in early April? Usually, thoroughfares are sprinkled with a grime of gravel, antifreeze, plastic bags, single mittens and other grody detritus that previously buried under a months-long blanket of snow. A lot less of that this year, right?

That’s because street sweepers fanned out across the cities at various times this winter. No, you didn’t have to move your car; it was more of a dusting than a deep spring cleaning.

“We made center-passes,” Paumen said, meaning the sweepers generally drove down the center of the streets. “All that fine sediment we pick up doing that, that puts phosphorus into our lakes. Normally, it just goes down the drains.” While Paumen said he doesn’t have water quality data to back this up, he’s confident the winter street sweeping has helped water quality for the area’s lakes and streams.

The lack of ice and snow banks also allowed crews with loppers and chain saws to get out and trim back vegetation that can encroach on sidewalks or hamper drivers’ visibility.

Not only was the winter weak on snow, it was warm — so warm that crews were able to get a head start on summer work.

March was warm enough for both cities, as well as surrounding suburbs, to start applying “hot mix” asphalt — the blend that binds and seals more durably than winter patches that infamously dislodge during spring freeze-thaw cycles.

St. Paul got so far ahead in its spring pothole-patching schedule that crews began working on alleys, which normally don’t get touched until July or August. Officials cautioned that plenty of new potholes formed after the most recent storm and more might come. But, they said, they’ve got a head start that’s unprecedented in recent memory.

Staff writer Katie Galioto contributed to this report.