Cold snap costs in millions

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As melted snow turned to treacherous ice last week, the city of Milton paid $1,350 so seven extra officers could work overtime helping residents caught in the storm.

Enlarge photo

Phil Skinner, AJC

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In DeKalb County, a half-dozen garbage trucks slid on ice into crashes, potentially costing the county $50,000.  Sand, salt and de-icer supplies alone cost the state Department of Transportation more than $940,000.

Across North Georgia, the glacial weather last weekend busted more than just water pipes.

Budgets for struggling cities and counties now must cope with costs from the weather.  Those costs likely will pale in comparison with the millions spent to repair damages from September's floods, and final figures are not in.  But it’s still clear that local and state budgets -- near breaking point already -- now must come up with well over $1 million altogether to repay storm costs.

That comes even as they continue to deal with the economic downturn, and it's in addition to millions in damage to private cars, homes and businesses, and ripple effects in the economy from lost work that could stretch into tens of millions of dollars. .

"I think it’s always a big deal when you have an unanticipated disaster, but it’s more so right now," said Mark Mathews, mayor of Kennesaw, which spent $2,300 on overtime for public works crews to keep the roads passable.  "With this current economic climate, any time you’re spending money that you’re being forced to spend because of a natural disaster…that will cause an issue somewhere else down the road."

The costs ranged from the obvious, like rock salt to melt road ice, to the unpredictable, like $1,050 that Milton will have to spend repairing one of those officers' cars, when it slid and broke a ball joint.  The city of Atlanta spent $50,000 on repairing all 103 breaks in water mains that carry drinking water, said spokeswoman Janet Ward. There were other breaks in other types of mains, she said. .

On the state level, don’t be surprised if sales tax revenues and Ga. 400 toll collections for the ice days show a dip, too.  At 8:25 a.m. Friday, the height of morning rush hour, a DOT camera near Abernathy Road showed Ga. 400 stretching into the horizon.  On it:  10 cars.  Toll booth records show traffic that day was lower than other working Fridays by more than 50,000 drivers.

Most governments are just going to have to figure out how to pay. But the state may help if there are extraordinary items.

"When we look at it, if there are outliers of things that weren’t anticipated, or are literally budget busters that can’t be handled, then we’ll take that into consideration in our budget," Gov. Sonny Perdue said in an interview this week.

DOT used to set aside emergency weather funds at its regional offices, but with budget cuts it stopped doing that, said DOT Treasurer Kate Pfirman. "Whatever the final number ends up being will come directly out of this year's state motor fuel revenues," the core source of DOT's programs, DOT spokesman David Spear said in an e-mail.  Pfirman said that with a hiring freeze that has lowered DOT employment by hundreds, fewer maintenance workers meant somewhat fewer roads cleared.  She emphasized that DOT prioritized and did the most critical ones.

All that doesn’t even get to costs in the equally feeble private economy.  Insurance claims for personal issues, including cars and busted pipes in homes, were about $25 million in Georgia for the week, said state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine. That's about double a normal week, his office said.

"I’ll tell you, this isn’t the worst storm we’ve had, but it was a very significant one," Oxendine said.

The cost of ripple effects in the economy could easily surpass the direct costs of the storm, said Ozlem Ergun, co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics at Georgia Tech.

"You’re closing down the schools, you’re not only sending the children home, you’re also causing one of the parents to stay at home, causing loss of productivity for business,” Ergun said.  “Also, you’re not going out to eat, you’re not going out to really buy something, you’re really causing a lot of revenue loss.”

Some of that activity is made up later, but some isn't, said David Ellis, who researches the economic impacts of mobility at the Texas Transportation Institute.  In Fulton County alone, he said, he wouldn't be surprised if the impact to the economy of losing all of a day's wages would exceed $50 million.  At Lenox Square mall, the costs continued for days, as several lower-level shops and food court restaurants closed Sunday after a water main break, a spokeswoman said.

As shops reopen and roads return to normal, the focus turns to the rest of the winter. "We’re obviously going to do whatever it takes to keep the public safe," DOT's Pfirman said. "But it obviously eats into our existing funds every time we have, so keep praying for good weather."

-- Megan Matteucci, Ralph Ellis, Eric Stirgus and Kristi Swartz contributed to this article.