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Politics

San Diego Potholes Will Be Filled One Neighborhood At A Time

A San Diego worker fills a pothole in the South Park neighborhood on April 29, 2014.
Claire Trageser
/
KPBS
A San Diego worker fills a pothole in the South Park neighborhood on April 29, 2014.

San Diego Potholes Will Be Filled One Neighborhood At A Time
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer presented a new plan to fill potholes one neighborhood at a time.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer wants to fill potholes one neighborhood at a time. He said the city used to have a "scattershot" approach, but no more.

"A complaint would come in and then a crew would go out and fix it," Faulconer said at a press conference. "Then they would go on to the next complaint even if it was sometimes halfway across the city.

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"We're not doing that anymore. We will still collect all of those complaints, but we will dispatch a crew to a specific neighborhood for the entire day."

The city's pothole repair crew will fill all the potholes in the neighborhood before moving on, Faulconer said.

A schedule of pothole repairs on the city's website shows the crew moving from district to district. It began in District 1 on April 1 and moved to District 2 the next day, then District 5, and so on.

The crew will visit District 1, which includes La Jolla, Torrey Pines and University City, eight times before June 30. That's the most among the city's nine council districts. It will visit the other districts seven times before June 30.

Faulconer also wants to add 16 full time positions to the city's pothole repair program. That, Faulconer said, will double the amount of asphalt repair the city does each year, from 100,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet.

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Fourteen of the new workers would join the city's crews that target larger potholes, according to Faulconer's office. The city would also add one more two-person pothole repair crew that fills smaller potholes, increasing the number of such crews from eight to nine.

These new positions are part of Faulconer's plan to beef up spending on infrastructure. His budget proposal suggests sending $21 million, about 64 percent of the city's $35 million in new major revenue growth, to infrastructure.

The mayor is also supporting an $120 million infrastructure bond that is currently blocked by a lawsuit.

Corrected: April 24, 2024 at 5:17 AM PDT
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of times the pothole repair crew will visit District 9 before June 30. It will visit the district seven, not six times.