Southside Residents Upset, Expanding Pothole Still Not Repaired

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Dan and Sarah Huffman can see it from their bedroom window, they drive by it every day and now the expanding pothole has become the bane of their existence.

"What's going on? We want to know what is the city doing?" questions Dan Huffman.

Actually, nothing is going on. The city has placed barricades around the depression in the road, but that is the extent of what has been done.

Sarah Huffman says, "I just thought by now they would have at least filled it in, and got the barricades out."

The last conversation On Your Side had with the city on this issue did not help, the city said it would be about two weeks before it would address the problem, that was on September 21, nearly a month ago.

"I was under the impression that after the last report that something was going to happen, still nothing has happened," says Dan Huffman.

The city now apologizes and says there was a misunderstanding. A spokesperson says the city was finalizing its budget and there were no funds to make repairs. Any work to the road would have been scheduled to begin two weeks after October 1, 2009, the start of the new budget year.

The Hoffmans say they understand budgets, but they would like the road repaired. In a statement, Public Works spokesperson Kristen Beach said it will be.

Beach writes:

"A Right of Way and Grounds Maintenance Division staffer went by and looked at this issue today. There is a depression in the asphalt that has been patched before and appears to be the result of a cave-in on a pipe. There is both a city drainage line and a JEA sewer line in this location, so it could be either one (or both) that has the cave-in. At our last investigation, signs pointed to a compromise with the city drainage line.

We will have a crew fill in the depression on Monday with asphalt (stopgap measure). On Tuesday, we will investigate further to determine if there is a cave-in on the drainage line. If so, we will try to repair the drainage line from the inside so that we do not need to excavate to replace the pipe.

If we cannot repair it in that manner, we will arrange for a work order with our drain line replacement contractor to replace the pipe (a more complex and expensive repair). If we have to go down that path, it could take up to 90 days for our contractor to fully replace this pipe due to our present backlog of these types of issues (unfortunately, a result of the very rainy summer)."

The Hoffmans are waiting to see the outcome.

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