Snow Removal Costs

Curious if anyone in the northeast area could share your experiences with snow removal costs.

We are a small assoc. (16 owners, 2 buildings, about 1,000sf per unit) with one single long driveway (easy to plow). The 2011 budget allocated $8,000 toward snow removal costs. Yesterday I was served with a special assessment which claimed total snow removal costs FROM JANUARY THRU MARCH OF THIS YEAR (it only snowed here Jan and Feb, so 2 months)... at a whopping $20,000. For this each owner is being assessed an amount of over $700 to cover the 11k plus over budget.

This sounds completely outrageous to me, as it only takes the plow about 30-40 minutes to finish the entire parking area upon each snowfall. I would say a group of 4 or 5 men would also shovel once a day after a storm. We also had the roofs of both buildings shoveled one time. That probably took 5 or 6 guys about a day to clear. But even with the amazing amount of snowfall we had this year I still cant imagine the man hours necessary to hit 20k in costs in under two months.

Is anyone else alarmed by this number? Can anyone share their experience with snow removal costs? Thank you.

Grudo,

More then likely the bills for Dec snow plowing was received in January. I live in Northern VA and last year we spent over 20K for snow removal and about 16K this year. The highest cost was for the salt.

Our budget is only 8K for snow removal. If we get any snow in CY 2011 (Oct,Nov,Dec) we will need a special assessment as well. If the snow is like it's been the last two years we will need to look at increasing the budget to match.

Are we alarmed? You Bet. I'm going to be more alarmed if gas doesn't go get back below $3 a gallon as next year the added fuel cost can be the major factor.

Tim

Our 38 unit community in CT got buried in snow this winter. Our annual budget of $25,000 covers the private roads, each units driveway and entry walk, and all the community sidewalks. We exceeded our budget by about $7K to pay for moving huge snow piles and clearing snow from roofs. We just approved an assessment to recoup this unbudgeted expense.

Jim

We live in a complex which comprises commercial (small stores, restaurants) and residential parts. The last one is still not fully built due an economy downturn, so the developer has a majority of votes on the board. Association's budget for snow removal has always been kept at 39k. Otherwise raising an association fee might be seen as detracting factor for potential buyers of new construction. So, this is already a 3rd years of emergency snow assessments. Back in spring of 2009 just residents had pay 55k extra, spring of 2010 surprised us with an extra 90k. And finally this year the residential community was assessed for around 150k. BTW, this is on top of township partly compensating for snow removal. And this is just for 12 acres of land and 114 units??? I was told by the manager that the association is being charged by vendor per inch of snow. Are snow removal contracts in NJ based on inches of snow are most cost effective? Does anyone have an experience with contracts charging per hour?

I apologize for redundant posts. Could not find out how to remove duplicates...

Whatever the fees are..... its time you put the contract out to bid again.

Let them compete with other snow removal companies and submit a bid. Only then will you get a better idea of what fair market value cost should be for their services.

I've never heard of per inch, per hour, but everyone charges differently.

Mike,

When you do that, use current bills and hours to compare your actual cost to possible costs. We looked into having plow costs by the inch of snow fall and after comparing actual costs with the proposed costs we didn't go that way. You also need to establish how the amount of snow fall will be determined (local paper, airport readings, local readings by xyz, company readings by xyz, etc.).

The real gotcha on those type of bids was the salting portion of the contract which was by application. Well, one run through the community is one application. Some snow falls could have two or three applications depending on the melt/freeze cycle.

When we did the comparison we discovered that the hourly rate was best. However, we still watched to make sure that the company didn't take advantage of it. One year we discovered that the drivers would drive through and drop the plow even if it didn't need it just to bill for the time.

Tim