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So far, Harford spends little for snow removal this winter

With snow and cold weather barely making an entrance so far this winter, Harford County and its three municipalities have hardly touched their snow removal funds.

That could change this weekend, when the region is set to get another blast of snow.

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Kenny Gemmill, chief of the county's highways maintenance division, said the department has about 90 percent of its 20,000-ton salt capacity left.

The county used 1,115 tons of salt between October and January at a cost of $122,729.

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"We have approximately $677,271.00 left in our salt budget," Gemmill wrote in an e-mail. "Last year,… we exhausted our salt budget which [was] $800,000.00."

County spokesman Bob Thomas said he does not believe any more snow removal was done this past weekend.

"I don't think we had staff out this weekend to my knowledge," Thomas wrote in an e-mail.

Matt Lapinsky, public works director for Aberdeen, said the city started out with about $25,000 in its snow budget.

Lapinsky also built a salt shed at the start of the year

He said only "a couple" truckloads of salt were used for the most recent snow last weekend.

Chris Schlehr, town administrator for Bel Air, said the town is "significantly behind" in its snow removal projections.

"We used about 120 tons of salt and that is what we had left over from last year," he said. "We normally budget for 330 tons of salt [at a time]."

The town budgets $23,200 for materials, he said, and also expects about 16 inches of snow.

"We used quite a bit more last year, at least three times as much," he said.

Larry Parks, in Havre de Grace, said the town spent about 10 percent of its snow budget, similar to the other governments.

"Our budget is probably one-third of what we spent last year to start with. We should be at 50 percent," Parks said, adding: "I would hate to jinx it."

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