Record snowfall wasn’t the only surge seen in Halifax in February: last month’s blast of winter also brought a blizzard of parking tickets and public complaints.

The city received about 7,500 calls in February about the condition of streets and sidewalks.

That’s an increase of more than 600 per cent from the same period last year, when the number of calls fell just short of 1,000.

The city saw a similar surge in the number of tickets issued for vehicles blocking snow-removal operations.

Last year, officers issued about 3,300 tickets for violations of the overnight parking ban — a number that has more than doubled this year, with nearly 7,000 tickets issued so far.

The extra revenue can’t hurt, as the cost of snow-removal operations is expected far exceed Halifax’s budget for the job.

In an interview with CTV News on Monday, Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said he expects the actual costs to exceed snow-removal the budget by more than $5 million.

The city began the season with a snow-clearing budget of $20 million.

Part of the problem, Savage said, is that the ice on city streets is as hard as concrete.

In some places, ice is 30-40 centimetres deep, prompting Halifax officials to deploy additional equipment.

On Friday, four grader teams with back hoes and front-end loaders began working on Halifax streets.

“The condition of our p-2 roads had got to the point where we needed extra help, we needed heavy equipment that would actually be able to cut that ice and actually remove it,” said Darrin Natolino, head of Halifax’s winter operations.

The additional crews come at a cost of about $40,000 per 12-hour shift.

Mark Daye, who was hard at work on Monday shovelling the sidewalk in front of his mother’s home, wonders why the heavy ice-removal equipment is only being brought in now, weeks after the ice started accumulation.

For Daye and others in the city, frustration with inadequate snow-clearing has been growing for just as long.

“We're paying for people to shovel our snow, then we come out and shovel the snow,” he said.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw