Thanks to the recent back-to-back winter storms that buried Lancaster city under about 40 inches of snow, there's no money in the budget right now for repaving city streets this year.

"These storms were real budget busters," Mayor Rick Gray said.

The city budgeted $170,000 for snow removal this year.

That was gone by the time the city dug out from the storm that hit Feb. 5.

Charlotte Katzenmoyer, the city's director of public works, said the storm that struck Feb. 9 cost the city another $260,000, because contractors had to be hired to haul snow off the streets by truck.

"We had nowhere to go with all that snow," she said.

Lancaster County Emergency Management Agency on Friday put out a call to the city and other municipalities, school districts, private schools and nonprofit agencies across the county to tally up their snow-removal costs from the two recent storms.

Randy Gockley, the agency's coordinator, wants to see if Lancaster County qualifies for disaster aid being made available by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We have to show that, countywide, those storms put unexpected stress on budgets," Gockley said.

To qualify for federal aid, the county must show that municipalities and others spent a combined total of more than $3.23 per county resident - based on the 2000 census of 480,000 - during a 48-hour period.

That's a total of more than $1.5 million.

Although Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency officials initially told the county the 48-hour period had to be selected from the Feb. 5-6 storm, Gockley said that rule was amended Friday.

"The municipalities and schools can select their most expensive 48-period from either storm," Gockley said.

That change was welcome news to Gray, who said the second storm was far more costly to the city than the first one.

"We had a lot of expenses the second time around that we just didn't have during the first storm," he said.

If the city can't recover some of the money it spent during the two storms, Gray said, there's no money in the budget to do paving work this summer.

Only snow-removal bills can be part of the county's application for federal aid, Gockley said.

"If a hospital had to keep people on overtime to deal with patients, that wouldn't qualify," he said. "But if they had to keep people around to plow snow - that would be."

Every organization that provides a snow-removal bill to the county agency by Wednesday will help the county reach the $3.23-per resident threshold.

The county must submit its total bill to PEMA on Thursday.

"The more response, the better," Gockley said. "Even if a municipality doesn't want to apply for aid for themselves, it still would be in everybody's best interest for them to report their estimates to us."

Conestoga Valley School District Superintendent Gerald Huesken said he received Gockley's call for bills Friday and "immediately asked my business manager to look into it."

Huesken said Sunday night he didn't know how much the district spent on snow removal during the two storms, but he knows maintenance workers put in a lot of overtime and contractors were hired to dig out the district's buildings.

"We're certainly hoping to qualify for assistance," Huesken said.

preilly@lnpnews.com