Rising fuel costs raise concern for state and city budgets

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The pain at the pump is being felt by every driver across the country but the high fuel cost is starting to raise concerns for state and city budgets.

Included in those budgets every year is the cost to fuel trucks such as snowplows and salt trucks.

According to AAA, the average cost for a gallon of diesel fuel is $4.42.

Snowplows and salt trucks run on diesel fuel which is becoming a worry on a state and city level.

Becky Allmeroth, chief safety and operations officer with MoDOT, says, "Even with our large trucks we use whenever they are fully outfitted doing patching operations or plowing snow they only get three or four miles per gallon so that's pretty low."

"Multiple that by the 1,500 trucks that we have across the state so that can be a big concern," Allmeroth said.

For winter operations MoDOT's budget is $50 million a year.

Allmeroth said, "We had a little bit of a rough February and we used about half of that budget during the month of February."

An increase in prices is likely from the vendors MoDOT receives their supplies from Allmeroth says.

"Anything we buy, having salt delivered a lot of those resources and everything needs to be called," Allmeroth says.

The Jefferson City Department of Public Works projects what their fuel budget will be for the year ahead of time which is more than $600,000.

Britt Smith, operation division director with Jefferson City Department of Public Works says, "Right now those projections have changed in 2022 by a dollar a gallon so obviously that's a dollar a gallon for gas and or diesel."

Moving forward if the high gas prices stay the same, Smith says there will have to be some changes to the future budget.

"It's defiantly going to affect those budgets and we're going to be talking with city council and developing a plan to combat that," says Smith.

For the City of Columbia over $3,500 is budgeted for fuel for winter weather maintenance this year and so far over $1,100 has been used for fuel.

The Missouri Department of Transportation, Jefferson City Department of Public Works and the City of Columbia says the current gas prices will not impact their resources or response to treating the roads during winter weather conditions or any future planned road work.