APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – It’s mid-January, and there hasn’t been much snow or ice accumulating on the roads so far this winter. That allows city workers to focus on tasks other than treating the roads.
“We’re not paying employees to work on snow and ice, but we’re paying them to do the other work,” says Appleton Public Works Director Paula Vandehey, “We just have a list of ‘here’s all the work we want to try to get done’, and when we have a slow winter, that allows us to get into those unending lists of jobs to do.”
That list includes everything from taking down holiday decorations to filling potholes to checking sewers. And she says it doesn’t necessarily mean the city is saving money.
“If we overspend on our snow and ice budget, we’re probably underspending our pothole maintenance budget, that kind of thing. Because it’s the same employees, the same trucks. Usually, at the end of the year it all just balances out,” Vandehey tells WTAQ News.
But have no fear, the Public Works Department is always prepared to gear up for winter weather. And the general lack of snow and ice is likely to change at some point – due to the fact that we’re in Wisconsin.
“We try to look a couple of days ahead. Two days from now we’re supposed to get a foot of snow, we need to make sure all the trucks are ready and everything is filled with salt. But we know it’s not going to be exactly what’s predicted,” Vandehey says, “It’s kind of business as usual for us to have a plan but then modify that plan as the storm changes.”
