Salt and other winter-weather supplies remain at comfortable levels in West Chester and Liberty townships, despite record-breaking snowfall in less than the past two weeks.

Still, the costs are mounting, and even the latest figures don’t include the most recent — and perhaps largest — storm this week.

As of Sunday, Feb. 14, Liberty Twp. crews had logged more than 332 hours, including more than 152 hours of overtime on routes around the community’s 131 miles of roadway. The Butler County Engineer’s Office maintains approximately 28 miles in the township, and just less than 16.5 miles of state routes are maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Total wages paid out of the township’s services department were just more than $8,781 as of Sunday evening, including just more than $4,051 in overtime, according to the township’s finance department. That’s far from the $30,000 budgeted for overtime for 2010. Last year’s rates topped out at $14,687, less than half of what was initially budgeted for 2009.

All crews were back to working typical eight-hour shifts as of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Liberty has spent just more than $55,000 on salt, approximately a third of the township’s total $150,000 salt budget.

As of Tuesday, Feb. 16, Services Director Rick Plummer — who picked up an extra route himself during Monday’s storm — said the township will see additional orders showing up soon, as a request for more salt has been standing since Monday, Feb. 8. The township has more than 150 tons of salt left — following a 50-ton delivery Tuesday — out of an initial total of 900 tons.

West Chester purchased nearly 3,000 tons of salt at for $161,014 to be used this year, or most of its $221,535 annual salt budget, according to Township Spokeswoman Barb Wilson.

Not including the storm this week, the township had spent more than $8,800 of its $30,000 budget for snow plow contractors.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the township had gone through all of the salt in one of its two storage domes. It had 1,400 tons of salt remaining in the second dome and an order for 1,200 additional tons of salt that was expected Wednesday, Wilson said.

This week’s storm represented a round-the-clock effort in West Chester, just as it did across Butler County. Local crews were called in at 5:30 a.m. Monday and worked through 7 p.m., followed by back-up drivers from 7 p.m. through 3 a.m. Tuesday. They finished their day around 3:45 p.m.

Crews were called back in at 3 a.m. Wednesday to finish clearing secondary streets and salting roadways to prepare for rush hour.