Public Works

Four months later, and there is still a hole in my street

l3wis June 5, 2013 15Comments

Almost four months after the water main broke in front of my house and this gigantic hole still exists. I of course avoid it, but it is fun to watch people barrel down my street and hit it for the first time. There has been no contractors to measure or look at it, there hasn’t even been anybody from the city to at least fill it with more gravel. I guarantee if this hole was in my front yard, code enforcement would have been on me like stink on shit.

What’s the pothole hotline again?

Bologna! (Updated with letter)

l3wis July 6, 2009 0Comments

I find it ironic that just one day after I send a letter to the editor of the Gargoyle Leader about how inefficient our public works department is, the same paper comes out with an editorial praising them and KELO does a story on the Capital improvement money being spent on infrastructure, finally. Do I think it is a conspiracy? Not at all, just a funny coincidence. I can’t post my letter here until it prints, but I pretty much talk about how the Public Works department wastes a lot of time filling the same holes instead of just fixing them correctly the first time;

That’s why it would be fairly easy to miss that Sioux Falls’ Public Works Department has been handling ongoing maintenance fairly well.

Bologna! Seriously! Filling a hole one day with blacktop, then tearing it up the next day and filling it with concrete is f’king assinine. It’s time the AL Ed Board pulls their heads out of the city’s ass.

UPDATE (This is a letter to the editor I sent to the Gargoyle on Monday, I haven’t heard a response from them, so I’m sure the trashed it, so you can read it here):

As a heedful follower of Sioux Falls city politics I had to laugh when city hall boasted to the media we were in superb financial shape. That’s an easy assertion when you only audit half of the city’s finances (an internal city audit only included the operational fund not the capital improvement). It would be like a mechanic informing you your car is road worthy even though two of your tires are flat.  It’s good to see our city bureaucrats have a glass half full mentality, even though that glass is nearly empty and has a crack down the side that is leaking badly. The truth is Sioux Falls is between eighty to hundred million behind on road construction infrastructure and with constant fee, retail, and property tax hikes you wonder who they are fooling with their myths of great fiscal responsibility. If we are in such superlative financial shape why do we keep escalating taxes and fees at such a high inflationary rate? And why aren’t we driving on streets of gold?

Well it doesn’t take the Wizard of Oz to figure that out.

On my way to work each day I drive past the intersection of 41^st and Cliff Avenue. This winter a water main broke at that intersection and public works had to fix it. After the repair they filled the hole with gravel and poured black top over it instead of filling it with cement like the original road surface. Since then they have poured black top over the spot and refilled it at least seven times. They tore it up today and started digging an even deeper hole. I suspect though that this may be the final repair because a private contractor was working on it. We can only hope.

I’m starting to think that if this is how we fix all of our roads in Sioux Falls it’s no wonder we are overdue on road maintenance. It takes a great deal of resources to fill a hole seven times instead just fixing it correctly the first time, and God only knows what this is costing us.

It’s time the Sioux Falls public works department takes a course in efficiency and while they are at it, maybe the finance department can share the classroom with them.