With winter storms almost a weekly occurrence since November and another dose of snow forecast later in the week, some towns in Oxford Hills are already eating deeply into winter road budgets.

In Oxford, Town Manager Michael Chammings said it was likely the town will go over its salt and overtime budgets due to the early storms.

“We’re already into it pretty deep, for it not even being the first of January,” he said.

The town’s road crews worked almost 70 hours in the past week alone, Chammings said. Some of that time was devoted to cleaning up after the Sunday’s fast-moving storm that left almost a foot of new snow on the ground across the region.

He predicted that Sunday’s storm was a harbinger of what’s to come. 

“We’re going to get a lot of snow this winter,” Chammings said. “We get it in cycles, maybe every four or five years, we get hammered with snow.”

Maine law requires cities and towns to keep the roads clear during the winter, even if it means going over what it had budgeted for the year, Chammings said. 

According to Chammings’ rough estimates, the town has already expended about 34 percent of the $24,000 it budgeted for highway department overtime this year. That estimate doesn’t include overtime in the past couple weeks and the actual amount the town has spent could be much more, he said. 

With so much overtime already used, the town probably won’t be able to avoid going over budget, especially in January and February, the months that typically call for the most overtime. It hasn’t helped that the storms have tended to hit on weekends, requiring the town to use its overtime budget, Chammings said. 

The town’s salt budget has been similarly hit. Chammings expects that about 30 percent of the $43,540 put aside for road salt will be spent by the time the town’s unpaid bills are accounted for. 

Norway’s overtime payout has been a little higher than expected but the town is largely on track with its maintenance budget, according to Carol Millett, the administrative assistant at the Town Office.

So far, the town has spent about a third of its overtime budget, almost $16,500 of the $45,000 allocated. The town’s salt expenditures, however, have been lower, only about 30 percent of the $70,000 budget has been spent, Millett said.

The town should be able to hold the line on its winter budget, but if it keeps on getting hit with successive storms, it could mean going over, Millett said.

Paris Town Manager Amy Bernard said the town is also holding its budget steady. She estimated that about 20 percent of the town’s $41,800 overtime budget and about a third of the $61,800 salt budget has been used since late November. 

Whether or not the town can keep its expenses in line will depend on what the rest of the winter brings, Bernard said. The town’s crews are gearing up for a forecast storm Thursday that could bring another six inches or more to the area.

“Mother nature has control over this; we don’t,” Bernard said.