It may seem strange to talk about snow removal when it’s pushing 90 degrees outside, but here we are.

Mayor Marc Laredo’s administration is asking for $900,000 in Division of Public Works money to be transferred from the department’s streets division—for use on paving supplies—to snow and ice removal.

The reason: Late paperwork.

“The need for this amendment arose when one of the city’s largest snow and ice contractors submitted approximately $850,000 in invoices following the execution of their contract at the end of May,” DPW Director Shawna Sullivan said to the Finance Committee Tuesday night. “While the services were performed during the winter season, the invoices were not received by Public Works until recently.”

The DPW has verified the accuracy of the late invoices, Sullivan added, and since it’s just a transfer of money, it won’t add anything to the department’s budget.

“Rather, it reallocates existing appropriations from a salary account with available funding due to personnel vacancies to the account where the expenditures were incurred,” she explained. “In addition, we have identified several process improvements to strengthen financial oversight moving forward.”

The money will have to be made up next year, however, when it comes to road work, or the city will have to take $900,000 worth of street paving work off the schedule.

“I would say that we are far more likely to come up with the money,” Chief Financial Officer Maureen Lemieux said. “What we will do is, in the fall, either September or October, once free cash has been declared… I would expect that we will be docketing an item to move $900,000 from free cash so that we can accomplish the paving that we would have done with this money.”

With contract scheduling the way it was, Sullivan conceded, the fact that the late submission was a surprise was the DPW’s fault.

“It was a failure on DPW’s part not to include that in our wrap-up for the year end, at our request for 32.2 million that occurred, I believe, in late April,” Sullivan said. “When they calculated, they did not calculate the full contract costs on our end. Yes, we should have been aware of them. Unfortunately, the contract was not executed until late May, which meant we couldn’t pay any invoices and we hadn’t received those invoices.”

The department is revising its snow removal contracting processes to make sure contracts are executed before each winter season, Sullivan said, and developing an enhanced tracking and reporting systems to monitor expenditures throughout the year.