With all the snowfall that's expected, and all that's already arrived, the snow budget is something of a concern this year.

The City of Swift Current, like every other municipality, has an allotted snow budget for the year. This budget covers the cost of things like snow truck maintenance, fuel, and unexpected expenses.

The man in charge of everything snow removal related in the City of Swift Current is the General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations, Mitch Minken.

"There's two components to our snow control budget," Minken explained. "Of course one is our internal costs, which you know is an allocation of people, time and effort on equipment."

Internal costs for removing snow means they are using City employees and equipment to cope with the winter weather which is the normal and preferred approach for dealing with the snow.

"That one is a little less serious than when we need to use a lot of outside contractors," said Minken about the other side of the budget. "For 2022 we were behind the 8 ball quite a bit because we had a really heavy early session from January to March, so we're we're behind the 8 ball already there."

With the heavy activity already being experienced this season, the budget is expected to be run rather tight for hiring contractors to help clear the snow.

As the budget thins, they begin to take measures to adapt and overcome the obstacles that they face, while lowering operating costs.

"We've already made those adjustments [earlier this year] and we'll do that now as well," said Minken. "If we're in snow control, that means that we're not doing some of the other things that we would normally be doing. That helps to keep the total budget in line."

By combining the efforts of different groups, like the streets and roadways and waterworks groups to accomplish tasks, they can use cooperation to help cut down on the size of a task. Utilizing specialties is always a surefire way to cut back on the difficulties encountered on an obstacle.

The budget also helps to cover the costs of things breaking and maintenance. By estimating the amount of repair and maintenance needed by tracking previous years' costs, they are able to determine a rough amount of money it will take to keep the fleet up and running for the season.

"We budget for those incidental breakdowns 'cause they always happen," confirmed Minken. "And slow blowers. The snow blowers are notorious for needing repair, so we always have some budget in there to take care of that."

For this year, with such a strong start to the season, crews are expecting to be working quite a bit. If you want to help them out, shoveling the sidewalk onto your property instead of the roads is a great way to help cut down on the amount they have to clear. Helping to cut back on the total weight they manage, saving fuel and equipment wear and tear.