Pothole season worst in recent history

Pothole season in Spokane is about as predictable as spring.

Every year as winter wanes, the holes open up as the pavement thaws, giving motorists no choice but to dodge the holes or risk costly repairs.

So far, 2008 is proving to be one of the worst pothole seasons in recent history, said City Councilman Bob Apple.

“It’s a mess out there,” said Apple, who is supporting a call by the mayor to spend $500,000 from the city’s cash savings to fix potholes and areas of cracked and broken pavement.

“Last year was pretty bad, but this year’s beat it,” Apple said.

Long stretches of older arterials are breaking up, while smaller potholes are appearing in streets that were repaired by the city as few as eight or nine years ago.

A section of South Lincoln Avenue near Wilson Elementary School is so badly deteriorated that the entire driving surface is breaking apart. Some of the damage is occurring in what streets officials call “mud boils,” where the soil beneath the street is oozing up through cracks in the asphalt pavement.

Some of the worst stretches in the city include Mission Avenue near Perry Street, Empire Avenue near Crestline Street, Wall Street between Wellesley and Francis avenues, and Browne Street just south of Interstate 90.

Many of the worst streets are scheduled for repair under the city’s 2004 arterial street bond program approved by voters to fix 110 miles of city streets over 10 years at a cost of $117 million. So far, the city has completed 30 miles of rehabilitations.

The city has 914 miles of paved streets, so even after the bond program is completed, many city streets will still be in bad shape, city officials said.

Mayor Mary Verner has proposed taking $500,000 from the city’s contingent reserve account to pay for emergency pothole work in 2008. That money can be used to grind and patch some of the worst sections of streets. In addition, she wants to increase street maintenance spending in 2009.

Apple said the council is likely to support the mayor’s requests. He said he would support an even larger allocation of $2 million.

The public is going to pay one way or another, he said. If the streets aren’t repaired, drivers will be forced to fork out money to replace broken tires, wheels and front-end components.

Nancy Masingale, owner of Poor Boys Tire and Automotive, 2501 N. Division St., said her shop has seen a lot more repairs for tires and wheels this year compared with last year because many of the holes are deeper than normal.

“It’s been worse this year,” she said.

City records bear that out. While the total number of potholes being repaired in Spokane is down slightly from 2007, the number of deeper, “type 3” potholes is up dramatically.

From Jan. 1 through Feb. 14 this year, the city has repaired 438 type 3 potholes compared to 76 such repairs during the same period in 2007.

Total numbers of potholes being fixed is about the same, with 975 this year compared with 1,004 last year through that same period.

Pothole reports are running about the same with 1,035 calls this year from Jan. 1 through Feb. 14 compared with 1,133 last year for the same period.

Kathy Miotke, a member of the Spokane Citizens Streets Advisory Commission, said the roads in her Five Mile Prairie Neighborhood are among the worst for potholes in the city.

She said that city officials likely are going to have to ask for another street repair bond issue during the next decade to continue the upgrading of the city’s older broken streets.

That means that the city now has to do a good job of spending tax money on street repair to maintain public confidence for future support of funding for additional rehabilitations.

“The taxpayers will think favorably about renewing it (the bond issue) if we do a good job,” Miotke said.

Apple said part of the problem in Spokane is the lack of spending on street maintenance in the years prior to the 2004 bond issue. He said the city “twiddled its thumbs for 20 years” while streets got progressively worse, and now the public is paying the price for that. “Boy, do we have an emergency,” he said.