Buffalo’s Plow Readiness Depends on Mechanics the City Hasn’t Been Able to Hire or Keep
The Broadway Barns garage ran about 22 mechanics in 2009; the city said its pay is not competitive as it heads into winter after only 14 of 36 plows were working in February.
Source: WKBW ↗
Buffalo, New York, has 12 mechanics to maintain vehicles across its entire city fleet, not just its snowplows, and heads into winter with the staffing problem unsolved after only 14 of its 36 plows were operational last season.
The 12 mechanics cover vehicles across the whole city, not only plows: eight work at the Broadway Barns garage, two in police and two in fire, Kevin Savage, the city’s superintendent of fleet maintenance, told WKBW. Savage said the shop ran roughly 22 mechanics when he started at the Broadway Barns in 2009. This year’s budget funds close to 20 positions.
Pay is driving the gap. The average annual salary for an auto mechanic in the Buffalo area runs about $53,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of the city’s auto mechanic positions paid below that figure under last year’s budget. The raises in the current budget bring the majority of those auto mechanic positions above that salary. Deputy Mayor Benjamin Swanekamp said negotiations with the union are still under way. “Our pay’s not competitive,” Swanekamp said. “We included raises in the budget, but we’re still negotiating with the union to try to get them to effectuate those.”
Mayor Sean Ryan addressed the staffing problem in February, when the plow count dropped to 14 working units. “One of the reasons we’re down so low is the city stopped properly paying its mechanics,” Ryan said at the time.
Savage said his crew is making do heading into winter understaffed. “We got a lot of hard-working guys who get the job done every day. We do the best we can with what we have,” he said.
Buffalo has six new snowplows on order, and Swanekamp said they are expected to arrive at some point this winter. Full staffing, he said, remains the administration’s aim. “Getting fully staffed is a huge goal for us,” Swanekamp said.
The city’s 2026-27 Winter Snow Plan, released Oct. 22, lists 10 vehicles on order, six of which could be ready for the second half of winter, and sets a goal of keeping 34 dual-axle trucks operational.
