CUMBERLAND — They’ve been a long time coming, but colder temperatures have begun to arrive in the Cumberland area, and snow is sure to follow. Despite the city’s budget cuts, Cumberland’s street department is ready to keep traffic flowing through the white powder.

“We try to maintain all the primary routes in town first, then go back and get the secondary routes,” said Brooke Cassell, superintendent of streets. Cassell said primary routes include Willowbrook Road and Williams Street leading to the new Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, though the state handles snow removal on state-owned portions of Willowbrook Road.

Other primary routes include Virginia Avenue, Henderson Avenue and Braddock Road.

Cassell said the department sends out workers to clear snow when they receive complaints from local police or warnings that a bad storm is coming.

“We’ll wait until we get a call from the police department saying it’s starting to get slippery or icy in certain areas,” said Cassell. “We come in and call street employees out and start putting out calls for other departments like water, sewer or parking to help out if needed.”

John Chapman, manager of Cumberland’s Maintenance Division, said snow-removal vehicles can be quickly prepared for work if necessary. “The salt spreaders are already attached and ready to go,” said Chapman. “It’d be a matter of getting snowplows on them.”

Chapman said budget cuts haven’t affected vehicle maintenance, though purchases of new vehicles have been curtailed. He also said that the vehicles aren’t only used to remove snow — a truck might also be used for repairs, for instance.

“Our utilities department also comes out for snow removal,” said Chapman. “They have trucks that they can use. We’ll have to depend on them more with less employees.” Chapman said budget cuts have led to two fewer employees in street maintenance and one fewer in parks and recreation maintenance.

Vehicle operators work in eight-hour shifts for no more than 16 hours at a time. Two employees operate each vehicle. Cassell said some overtime is part of the job, though she wasn’t able to give a value for how much because it can vary based on the time and amount of snowfall and because that overtime is for everything the department does, not just snow removal.

Cassell said the department had $98,000 available to purchase salt chemicals to cover the roads for this season. “We have an area down here where we store (the salt) now,” said Cassell. “When it starts depleting as we get bad storms, we call our provider, typically American Rock Salt, tell them how much we need and they truck it in to us.”

The city has about 300 tons of salt in stock and typically uses 1,000 to 1,500 tons during a season.

Frederick is currently testing a mixture of molasses and beet juice to coat roads instead of salt to improve traction for motorists, but Cumberland doesn’t yet have plans to move away from the standard salt coating. “I’m sure it’d be considered in Cumberland if it went well in Frederick,” said Cassell. “We’re always open to new options.”

Cassell said the department plans to continue providing salt barrels at intersections where motorists may have trouble getting their vehicles up hills. Motorists are able to use the salt to give their vehicles additional traction.

Contact Cory Galliher at cgalliher@times-news.com.