Snow Exhausts County Budgets; Thousands Without Power
SOUTHFIELD (WWJ) - The biggest snowfall of the winter season means many counties are about to max out their maintenance budgets.
The Oakland County Road Commission said even if they go into the red, they will continue to battle the snow, but will have fewer funds to repair potholes this summer.
Meanwhile, Macomb County's Department of Roads says the county has used up about 90 percent of its $3.8 million winter maintenance budget. And Wayne County's Director of Roads says they have only about half of their maintenance monies left.
Meantime, about 105,000 Consumers Energy electric customers remain without service, most of the outages are in Monroe, Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Lenawee counties.
Consumers says a majority of customers still without electric service should have their power restored by late Thursday evening.
WWJ's Chrystal Knight, reporting from the area of Eleven Mile and Inkster roads in Farmington Hills, says she can honestly see why the buses seem to be having a problem. The snow was pretty high on the streets in the subdivision near the Costick Center. So high, as a matter of fact, that she attempted to drive down one of them and quickly realized that was not a good idea. She got stuck in a huge clump of snow and it took a couple of minutes to get free.
But, the good news is there were two very large plow trucks nearby. They saw her dilemma, and started getting to the subdivisions slowly but surely.
Chrystal says she also found it interesting that there were a couple of private snowplow trucks going around. A lot of citizens in the area took it upon themselves to clean up the streets.
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