By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
CARO — Winter’s lingering, biting cold is eating away at Tuscola County Road Commission funds used for plowing and de-icing roads, according to agency officials.
“We’re a long ways from April, folks. It’s kind of scary,” Jack Laurie, chairman of the five-member Road Commission Board, said at the board’s Jan. 16 meeting.
Laurie directed the Road Commission’s management team to seek ways to improve “efficiencies” and report back at the board’s Feb. 13 meeting.
“We may have to look at some cost-saving measures from here on out to see what we can do, because we won’t have much money for our work if we don’t,” said board Vice-Chairman Gary Parsell.
Winter began Dec. 21 and runs through March 20, and has been “very cold and very snowy, compared to normal,” in Tuscola County, said meteorologist Matt Mosteiko of the National Weather Service office in Oakland County’s White Lake Township.
The county’s average daily low temperature for January so far — taken at Caro — has been 9 degrees, while the normal daily low temperature for January in Tuscola County is about 14 degrees, according to Mosteiko.
“We’ve had a pretty good stretch of cold and the wind hasn’t been our friend, either,” said Mike Tuckey, Road Commission finance director, noting windy weather has caused repeated snow-drifting on county roads.
When Parsell asked for an update on the Road Commission’s “snow-plowing money,” Tuckey replied that ”We ate up quite a bit of it in the last three or four weeks — it’s getting tight.”
And the cost of brine, purchased for 7 cents a gallon by the Road Commission, has become an issue, according to Superintendent/Manager Jay Tuckey.
“It’s costing us almost — and I hate to say it — three times as much to use brine than it is to use salt, to de-ice (roads),” Jay Tuckey said. “But our problem is we don’t have the capacity to keep enough salt on hand to de-ice everything throughout the year. So you talk about cost savings; that’s something we’re going to really have to take a look at.”
The Road Commission Board might have to buy new salt-storage sheds earlier — and larger — than preferred, officials said.
Road Commission Board member Julie Matuszak said she has read articles that crews in Pennsylvania were applying molasses on roads to combat ice, and that workers in Wisconsin were fighting ice by spreading cheese — on roads.
“The setback we’re getting from the winter weather is not a short-term thing,” Parsell stressed. “It’s going to affect us for a couple years down the road. … It certainly doesn’t look like there’s going to be any more money coming from the state.”
In terms of temperatures, Tuscola County won’t see any relief for the rest of this month, according to meteorologist Mosteiko.
The weather through Feb. 1 “will be very, very cold, well below normal” in the county, Mosteiko said. Low temperatures will dip below zero degrees on several days, and the wind-chill factor will drop to minus-25 degrees on several days.
It’s possible the amount of money spent on winter maintenance of roads “could take away from our summer routine maintenance of grading, dust control and tree and brush cutting,” Mike Tuckey said.
In other action Jan. 16, the Road Commission Board approved a bid to buy liquid calcium chloride — used to control dust on gravel roads — in 2014 from Liquid Calcium Chloride Sales in Bay County’s Kawkawlin Township. The Road Commission will buy the product for 47.5 cents per gallon. Two other bidders offered a different product for a lower price, but the board voted 5 to 0 to buy the product requested by the Road Commission when it sought bids.
The board also voted to buy asphalt for “cold patch” of potholes in 2014 from Ace-Saginaw Paving Co. of Saginaw for $90.14 a ton, choosing that bid over two other bids.The Saginaw company’s bid was approved over bids from two other businesses.