ROANOKE RAPIDS — The big snow from last weekend certainly caused headaches for area motorists in addition to issues surrounding school openings.

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However, the storm didn’t hit local governments too hard in their treasuries.

“We probably spent very little,” stated Halifax County Manager Tony Brown.

“We don’t clear roads — that’s (North Carolina Department of Transportation.)”

Brown felt fortunate on a number of levels with this storm, particularly that the electricity kept flowing. “It was good we didn’t lose any power, when we lose power that’s when we potentially need to use shelters. If we had activated our Emergency Operations Center that would have been more potential cost to us.”

The timing of the storm helped save money for the county as well, Brown asserted — “Because it happened on a weekend it probably saved us a day’s worth of salaries.”

Monday’s late opening did cost the county a little bit of money. “Because we opened two hours late we had two hours of salary time but we didn’t get the two hours of productivity from the employees’ side. It wasn’t an additional cost; it’s just they weren’t at work for two hours.”

In the end for Halifax County, the storm’s costs were minimal, Brown asserted. “Almost like the typical cost of doing business.”

In Roanoke Rapids, the total cost of the storm has yet to be calculated, but Public Works Director Richard Parnell has good news — the cost of the snow removal and street sand and salt will not be borne by the taxpayers of Roanoke Rapids.

“It’s all Powell Bill eligible,” Parnell said. The Powell Bill takes one and three-quarters of every cent generated in state gasoline taxes in North Carolina and puts it into a street fund for localities. “It’s then distributed to municipalities,” Parnell explained, “based on 75 percent population, 25 percent street mileage.” The city gets a check every October somewhere around $500,000, Parnell said.

“Powell Bill is a very large part of our street budget,” Parnell stated.

“We depend on it tremendously to perform maintenance on city streets.”

Snow removal is a Powell Bill eligible expense, which means expenses associated with it are covered. Parnell had three men working overtime on Saturday when the snow really began to fall hard, and 13 men working Sunday, all on overtime. “We’ve had to buy some sand,” Parnell added. “I know there was some fuel cost.”

The true cost of the storm for Roanoke Rapids won’t be known for some time.

But at least a city already on a tight budget didn’t get hit with any sizeable additional expense.

 Editor’s note: Northampton County officials weren’t available for this story. We will follow up with the cost of the storm in Northampton County in Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Herald.