CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A recent pothole blitz announced by the city of Corpus Christi was so successful that there’s now a backlog of repair requests!
And as Michael Gibson tells us tonight, no one at the public works department is complaining about that fact.
City crews have been super busy lately after the pothole blitz program sparked people to call in and report the craters they spot around town. The huge effort ran from May 10 to June 1. The goal initially was to fill 4,000 potholes over a two week time period.
But, because of bad weather, the blitz was extended a week. Workers ended up filling up 6,700 of these street craters.
“Since then, our numbers have dramatically increased and we’ve had just an influx of pothole requests coming through," Roland Mata, Assistant Director of Public Works/Streets Department said. "This is good for us because we’re being proactively engaged with the public for them to let us know where the potholes are.”
Right now the public works department says it has over 100 repair requests.
Roland Mata is the assistant director of the department and is asking people to keep on calling.
"Every request that comes in we’re going to try to get it done within 48 hours that’s our goal, that’s our aim but we’re also going to be working on the backlog we’re also going to be working some overtime just to make sure we can catch up.” Mata said.
One of those streets that was part of the backlog was Braesvalley Drive. Since the rains in late May, dozens of potholes popped up along the street between Snowgoose and Winrock Park.
The city came in on Thursday and patched those all up. Something they’ve had to do around town to many streets after it rains.
"Almost every street in the City of Corpus Christi has deferred maintenance on it, That means that for the last 30 years there has been no, as you were saying, a mill and an overlay for those streets. Many of those streets are no longer within the mill and overlay program they have to be re-constructed," Mata said.
So how big of a pothole problem does the City of Corpus Christi have? Well, Mata says between September of last year and April of this year, his 8 man workforce repaired over 66,000 of them. A huge problem that keeps these guys busy trying to make your ride down these worn out streets as smooth as possible.
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