{"id":3203,"date":"2015-01-29T05:28:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T10:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=3203"},"modified":"2015-01-29T00:57:07","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T05:57:07","slug":"weaker-snowstorm-saved-ocean-county-taxpayers-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/01\/weaker-snowstorm-saved-ocean-county-taxpayers-officials-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Weaker Snowstorm Saved Ocean County Taxpayers, Officials Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A snowy road in Brick\u2019s Herbertsville section. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

There has been a lot of talk this week about how much a blown forecast about a blizzard that wasn\u2019t cost taxpayers. At least in Ocean County, the lack of a megastorm ended up saving tax dollars rather than wasting them, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s four inches, six inches or eight inches, it doesn\u2019t matter, you\u2019re plowing the road anyway,\u201d explained Carl Block, Ocean County Administrator.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had gotten two or three feet of snow, we probably would still be out there trying to clean it up,\u201d said Freeholder Jim Lacey.<\/p>\n

Ocean County is responsible for 1,600 miles of roads, the most of any county in the state. In Brick, the county is responsible for numerous major roads \u2013 such as Herbertsville Road, Mantoloking Road and Brick Boulevard \u2013 as well as nearly 100 local streets.<\/p>\n

For its plowing efforts, the county spent $321,147, including $12,000 in diesel fuel and about $7,000 in gasoline. The road department used 4,654 tons of salt, and 37,000 gallons of brine solution to treat roadways, said J. Thomas Curcio, Ocean County road supervisor, at a meeting of the county freeholder board.<\/p>\n

Brick Township\u2019s municipal government is responsible for paving smaller streets, mainly in residential neighborhoods. Mayor John Ducey said the township is still in the process of calculating its overtime expenses and figures on how much the storm cost local taxpayers were not yet available.<\/p>\n

But for the county\u2019s part, officials say a lesser amount of snow meant less overtime, less equipment that needs to be repaired and fewer materials needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some new vehicles in, and it makes a big difference when things aren\u2019t breaking all the time,\u201d said Curcio.<\/p>\n

After the season\u2019s first brush with measurable snow, there were few complaints, and much praise from county officials for the employees who worked long hours treating roads with brine solution, then turning right around and plowing snow once it fell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job that gets done is from a small army of men and women who are well trained,\u201d said Freeholder Jim Lacey. \u201cWe were prepared for the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of talk this week about how much a blown forecast about a blizzard that wasn\u2019t cost taxpayers. At least in Ocean County, the lack of a megastorm ended up saving tax dollars rather than wasting them, officials said Wednesday. \u201cWhether it\u2019s four inches, six inches or eight inches, it doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[24,1592,903],"class_list":["post-3203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-ocean-county","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-ocean-county","tag-snow-plow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/car_snow.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-PF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}