City of Aurora paying more for winter road salt after bid shortfall from providers

It won't be long before snow becomes a topic of discussion, but state and local crews are already planning.

In Aurora, two of its salt domes are full. But to fill their newest and largest third dome, they reached out to the state earlier this year, like hundreds of local municipalities, and joined a bidding process to get a good price on salt.

But for the first time in a long time, that didn't go as planned.

"Salt is one of those high-priced commodities that can be very expensive and when you're dealing with the taxpayers' funds, that's something that we don't take lightly and we are talking over $1 million to fill the salt dome of this magnitude," said Aurora Superintendent of Street Maintenance Adrian Perez.

Perez is tasked with maintaining the city's salt supply. 

This year he tried to buy 12,500 tons, splitting that between two processes — buying half, 6,250 tons, through a state channel and the other from the county supplier.

But in July, Aurora and more than 250 other municipalities got a message from the state saying the state "did not receive any bids" from salt providers. 

They had two choices: find their own rock salt supplier independently or remain in the state process for emergency sourcing. 

Aurora went with the first option, but compare these prices.

They are paying $74.30 per ton through the county process, but $85.20 per ton for the independent contract. That's a $68,125 difference for the same amount of salt.

State officials said 165 other municipalities also purchased independently and 94 governments stuck with them. They say they have found a seller to fulfill their state orders.

"There's a lot that goes into it when you're buying salt. It's not just picking a vendor and going with it. You're really looking at a lot of different avenues," Perez said.

Aurora leaders tell CBS News Chicago they could get more salt delivered at any time and hope to finalize the last salt purchases with the city council soon.

They're planning ahead in other ways too. Salt training for their crews will begin on Tuesday.