(Radio Iowa) – The State Transportation Commission is discussing cutting a portion of the D-O-T’s snow removal budget. D-O-T Winter Operations director Craig Bargfrede says they haven’t been as busy as past years. “The last two years and what not, have shown us…we just didn’t have as much winter,” Bargfrede says. The storm last week dropped large amounts of snow across the state, but Bargfrede says it hasn’t been consistently busy all winter. “From a materials standpoint, we haven’t had to utilize as much of the budget for materials as we had previously. And so, yeah, there’s been a lot of discussions focused around the budget,” he says. D-O-T staff told the Transportation Commission at their meeting early this month they are looking at a one million dollar cut in the winter budget for materials like salt and sand.

Bargfrede says he thought the dry winter trend had turned around until we got into the new year. “The way our winter started this year, I thought, ‘oh boy, hold on to your hat.’ You know, we could be in for one of these winters,” he says. “And I certainly didn’t anticipate that when January came around, that we were basically going to shut everything off and hardly get any snow at all in the month of January.” Bargfrede says they don’t have to worry about salt and sand spoiling if it isn’t needed. “There’s really no shelf life to those materials. So yes, we can carry that over into the next fiscal year and the next winter season,” he says.

The Transportation Commission will look at making that snow removal materials adjustment when they approve the next budget.