Atlanta may no longer look like Siberia these days, but the impact of last month’s monster snow storm is still chilling.
The city spent $4.7 million on snow removal and costs related to the storm that crippled much of the city, according to documents released to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Of that sum, the city spent $3.4 million for hiring 10 outside contractors to provide snow removal, attempting to relieve a city that is without its own fleet of heavy storm equipment.
At least two of those companies, Cascade Building and CTC, earned more than $1 million for their services.
“Clearly, we are not happy that we had to spend so much money. Clearly, we are not happy we had such a big snow and ice,” said Peter Aman, the city's chief operating officer. “But given the scope of what we had to do, this cost is justified by the scope of the storm. This was a proportional response.”
Earlier this week, the AJC cited a Georgia Emergency Management Agency report that showed that the state had spent $19 million to fight the January storm.
While several municipalities have not yet reported their spending, Atlanta’s total pushes the state figure up to more than $23 million, making in one of the costliest storms in state history.
Aman said the money to pay for the storm clean-up would come out of the city’s general fund and should be affordable, since the city has underspent in other areas of the budget.
Council members were slow to respond to the figures; many said they had not studied the costs yet.
"I have no expertise in the area of snow removal," said Yolanda Adrean, who chairs the council's finance committee. "But I am surprised that it cost so much."
John Sherman, the president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, has mixed feelings about the response and spending. He is calling for the city to create a reserve fund for snow removal and to form a blue-ribbon panel to come up with plans and identify cheaper contracting options.
“I thought the cost was somewhat high, especially considering the fact that some of the main roads were not cleared in time,” Sherman said. “Like everything else, you have got to shop around. This was a unique situation that doesn’t happen often.”
The fast-moving storm hit Atlanta on Jan. 9.
Instead of the traditional fast melting that Atlantans are accustomed to, the snow and ice lingered for days, paralyzing all of metro Atlanta. Four inches of snow, coupled with devastating ice, made clean-up even more difficult, as temperatures lingered in the 20s in the days after the storm. It became the second-largest storm in 15 years and the fifth-largest in the last 30 years.
“The problem was the snow that got compacted to ice,” Aman said. “It was a hybrid event, worse then either a snow or ice storm. The only way to effectively beat this storm would have been to plow every street twice in the first eight hours.”
But Atlanta, like the state and many Southern cities, was not fully prepared, although it made an attempt. Aman said that as early as December, the city had established a new snow and ice removal plan, which included doubling the existing fleet of snow removal equipment to more than 20 pieces through the use of contractors.
“It is inaccurate to claim the city was not prepared,” Aman said. “The city was prepared, but it was overmatched. The storm was annoying because we had a better plan than we ever had before and it still wasn’t enough. ”
Aman said that by mid-day Jan. 10, when the severity of the storm settled in, the city had hired 10 contractors, who flocked to Atlanta with nearly 150 pieces of heavy equipment.
But while the state was busy clearing highways, the city was also forced to clear state-owned streets that run through Atlanta, like Peachtree Street, which was so impassable at times that people were actually ice skating down it.
Deputy COO Duriya Farooqui said about half of the city’s early efforts in snow removal involved clearing state-owned streets, which cost the Atlanta more than $1 million.
“We had to insure that the primary roadways were cleared first,” Farooqui said. “If you don’t have those clear, nothing else matters.”
In addition to the contracting costs, the city also spent around $900,000 at the airport and $600,000 on public safety, mostly for overtime and equipment.
“The fact that the city stayed open led to these incremental costs,” Farooqui said. “The mayor made it extremely clear that we were going to act swiftly and that we were going to be responsive and aggressive in how we handled this. Given the circumstances and the resources we had, we did the best we could’ve done.”
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