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– It may not be a white Christmas this year, but Stutsman County isn’t complaining.

After seeing its budget decimated by snow removal and flooding costs the past few years, Stutsman County is enjoying a relatively snow-free December as it tries to keep its budget in check.

According to the National Weather Service, the Jamestown area usually has about 15 inches of snow through December, but this year will have seen just a few inches.

County auditor Casey Bradley said the county may have spent close to $100,000 in overtime for snow removal last year, and the snow-free winter so far is helping offset extra costs from flooding earlier this year.

“With the amount of flooding that we saw in the spring and summertime, the budgets were pretty well gone anyways,” he said. “It’s helping us get back to where we should be.”

On Tuesday, the county commission approved a bond resolution that would allow the county to borrow up to $2.74 million dollars to help fund permanent repairs on roads damaged by 2009 and 2010 flooding.

Bradley said the bonds act like a line of credit, with the county using as much or as little as needed. He says as of right now they are waiting to see how this spring goes before deciding to borrow money with the bonds.

Bradley said Federal Highway reimbursement money for previous projects has been slow coming back to the county, leading to the need for the bonds.

“$2.8 million is still owed to us for work we did already,” he said. “We had to pay the contractors, but now we can’t get reimbursed (right now) for what we’re supposed to get reimbursed for.”

The county has 15 Emergency Repair projects slated to be done in 2012 at a cost of about $18.7 million dollars total, and a $2.7 million dollar cost to the county.