The mild winter has allowed local governments to save thousands of dollars in expenses to replenish salt supplies and overtime pay for employees who remove snow.

“I don’t think we have had a winter that was this snow-free in my time here,” said Butler County Engineer spokesman Chris Petrocy, who’s been with the office for 20 years.

Local officials said they are weary talking about the savings until winter is finished, but an examination of salt supplies and amount paid in overtime by the JournalNews/Middletown Journal shows a dramatic savings in some cities.

Hamilton and Middletown have spent, combined, $300,000 less on salt supplies at this point than previous years. Butler County has spent $80,000 less this year than in 2011 in overtime expenses.

“If the winter keeps up the way it’s going, and all indications it will, we’ll come in well under budget,” said Petrocy.

Middletown Finance Director Russ Carolus said the city is saving money.

“Obviously it’s been a mild winter and we haven’t used as much salt and overtime as in prior years, but we don’t know how that’s going to affect the overall budget because other things will come in its place,” said Carolus.

But payroll is where governments save “the big money,” he said. “It’s in the service that you provide. The salt is important, but it’s the people that cost money.”

Hamilton’s acting Public Works Director Rich Engel said while it is anticipated the mild winter will continue, “sometimes March and April can be a bit dicey.”

“As always, we budget for what our typical year is,” he said.

Andrew Snyder, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Wilmington, said it’s not likely the weather will top 60 in the days to come.

“At this time, the pattern is going to become kind of unsettled, though the exact details aren’t very clear,” Snyder said. “It looks like there could be the potential for some snow with a low-pressure system coming through (today). It doesn’t look like a major system at this time. It might be a situation where rain changes over to snow at the end or something along those lines.”

The averages for Butler County in December have ranged between 39.5 and 36.4 degrees this winter, about 5 degrees above the normal average, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington. The range for January has been between 35.3 and 30.7 degrees, 3 to 5 degrees above the normal average, and between 36.5 and 34.7, 2 to 3 degrees above the normal in February.

Many communities spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for salt supplies in 2010 and 2011 because they were “snow intensive and it taxed our resources,” said Middletown Public Works and Utilities Director Dave Duritsch. Last winter season, Duritsch said there were 18 snow or ice events. There’s only been four this year.

While money is being saved by not having to pay to replenish salt supplies, Fairfield has a unique problem: too much salt.

Butler County’s salt contract includes Fairfield, Hamilton, Oxford and various townships and villages. Fairfield, as well as Hamilton and other communities, order salt at the same price, and are required to purchase 70 percent of what they planned to order.

Engel said they have room for the salt it has to purchase, and Butler County recently finished its second salt barn.

But for Fairfield, of the 3,150 tons of salt they are obligated to buy 1,400 tons of that won’t fit in its salt barn.

“That’s $91,000 of salt that I have to buy that I can’t store,” he said. “Sometimes you’re begging for it and you can’t get it.”

While the salt won’t go bad in storage, selling it isn’t a practice any of the local governments want to start.

The money being saved by Butler County and Middletown will likely be spent on other projects.

“When you’re not spending the money on salt or personnel for snow operations that frees up the budget for potentially doing other things,” Duritsch said. “You gain some flexibility on how you use the budget.”

Money saved in salt costs can be re-purposed for road or culvert work, officials from Butler County and Middletown said.

Fairfield and Hamilton officials, on the other hand, said they save that unspent money in other ways.

“If we don’t use it on our snow removal, then the money will stay in the general fund and help with our bottom line balance, or help with any other disaster that we may come across throughout the year,” said Fairfield Public Works Director David Butsch.

In Hamilton, that money is typically placed in an unencumbered fund for the Public Works Department at the end of the year, but if the need arises, then city council can reappropriate the funds, Engel said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2175 or michael.pitman@coxinc.com. Follow at twitter.com/mdpitman.