The Pothole on My Street Has Been There for Two Years

Let Me Paint You a Picture

There is a pothole on my street that has been sitting there for two years. Two full years. Twenty-four months. Seven hundred and thirty days of watching my neighbors swerve around it, watching delivery drivers hit it and curse under their breath, watching my own front tires dip into it every single morning when I back out of my driveway. It started as a crack. A small, innocent-looking crack in the asphalt that I figured the city would handle in a few weeks. That was two years ago. That crack is now a crater. We are talking about a hole that is roughly two feet wide and deep enough that when it rains, it becomes its own little pond that splashes muddy water onto passing cars. I have named it. I call it The Abyss, because that is exactly what it feels like every time I see my tax dollars sitting in a hole in the ground doing absolutely nothing.

I Did Everything Right

Before you say it, yes, I reported it. Multiple times. I am not the kind of person who just complains without taking action. I went online and filled out the city’s infrastructure request form the first month I noticed it getting bad. I got a confirmation email with a ticket number that made me feel like maybe, just maybe, the system was working. I saved that email. I still have it. Nothing happened. Three months later I called the public works department directly and sat on hold for forty minutes before speaking to someone who told me the ticket was in the queue and that they would get to it based on priority. Priority. A hole in the ground that is eating car tires is not a priority. Got it. I called back two more times over the following year and received variations of the same answer. The ticket is active. It is in the system. Someone will be out. No one has ever been out.

What This Actually Costs Real People

Let me tell you what two years of a pothole looks like in real human terms because I do not think anyone sitting in a government office actually thinks about this. My neighbor Maria hit that pothole hard last winter and blew out her front right tire on her way to work. She drives a ten-year-old sedan and she is a home health aide. She does not have money sitting around for emergency tire replacements. She had to call her sister to come get her, miss half a day of work, and spend money she did not have on a new tire and an alignment check because the hit was so bad. She filed a claim with the city. They denied it. The denial letter said there was no prior written notice of the defect on file at the time of the incident. I want you to sit with that for a second. I had filed a report. The ticket existed in their own system. But because of some bureaucratic technicality about how notice is formally recorded, Maria was left holding the bill for damage caused by a road the city is legally responsible for maintaining. That is not a glitch in the system. That is the system working exactly as it was designed, which is to protect the institution and abandon the resident.

The Excuse Machine Is Always Running

I have heard every excuse at this point and I am tired of all of them. Budget cuts. Supply chain issues with asphalt. Crew shortages. Prioritization of major arterial roads. Seasonal freezing and thawing cycles that make repairs difficult. You know what I have not heard? An actual timeline. A specific date. A commitment. Not once in two years has anyone from this city looked me in the eye, literally or figuratively, and said we will fix your road by this date and we are sorry it took this long. Instead I get a rotating door of non-answers wrapped in the kind of language designed to make you feel heard while ensuring nothing actually happens. I have started to believe that the system is not broken. I think this is exactly what they want. Make the process just difficult enough that people give up. Hope that residents lose track of their ticket numbers. Wait for enough time to pass that people forget what functional government even looks like.

I Pay Taxes for This

I want to be clear about something because I think it gets lost in these conversations. I pay property taxes. My household has never missed a payment. Every year I write a check to this city and a chunk of that money is supposed to go toward maintaining the roads in my neighborhood. I am not asking for anything extraordinary. I am not asking for a new park or a renovated community center or some ambitious infrastructure project. I am asking for the road in front of my house to be safe to drive on. That is the baseline. That is the floor. That is the most basic thing a municipal government is supposed to do and it cannot manage to do it in two years. Meanwhile I drive across town near the city center, near the government buildings and the business districts, and those roads are smooth. Those roads get repaired. Someone in this city knows how to fix a road. They have just decided that my street is not worth their time.

So What Happens Now

I am not going to stop. I have started documenting everything with photos and timestamps. I have connected with other residents on my block who are just as fed up as I am. We are taking our complaints to city council meetings on record, not just emails that disappear into a system. I am looking into whether there is a case for small claims court over the ongoing depreciation this road condition creates. And I am writing this because I know I am not alone. Somewhere in your city there is a pothole that has been sitting there since before you can remember, and you have called, and you have emailed, and nothing has happened. Your frustration is legitimate. Your anger is appropriate. Do not let anyone manage you into silence with a ticket number and a vague promise. The road belongs to us. Make them fix it.