Teams of Salt Lake City workers are blitzing the streets this week to plug those pesky potholes that have plagued the pavement in Utah’s capital.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall on Tuesday announced “Pothole Palooza,” a weeklong effort to repair thousands of potholes that were left on city streets in the wake of destructive wintry weather.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall repairs a pothole after announcing the city's Pothole Palooza road repair effort on Tuesday, April 11, 2023.
“With this freeze-thaw cycle that pops those potholes out,” the mayor said, “we’re seeing an incredible amount of potholes.”
The city assembled a team of about 70 employees to focus on repairing the roads. On Monday, the crews filled about 1,300 potholes, and the mayor expects them to fix a total of about 6,000 by week’s end.
This winter wreaked havoc on city streets, leading crews to fill about 1,000 more potholes in the first few months of 2023 than they did all of last year, according to Julie Crookston, an administrator for the city’s Public Services Department.
“If you’ve seen more potholes than normal,” she said, “you’re not crazy.”
Mendenhall said she wants to make Pothole Palooza an annual tradition.
The mayor said crews are responding to repair requests that may come through a city app for reporting issues such as potholes, graffiti and illegal dumping, but they’re also being directed to fill any other potholes they see.
“We receive those requests all across the city, but as we’ve seen recently in some reporting,” Mendenhall said, “that is not necessarily an equitable reporting, meaning not every neighborhood has the time or the digital capacity to tag a pothole for us and let us know.”
In February, The Salt Lake Tribune analyzed hundreds of pothole repair requests submitted through the city’s mobile app over a three-year period and found west-siders report pothole problems far less often than east-siders.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall gets some tips on repairing potholes from city workers after announcing the city's Pothole Palooza road repair effort on Tuesday, April 11, 2023.
Experts and city officials said the dearth of reporting could be attributed to west-siders facing more barriers, including a digital divide, longtime distrust in government, income differences, a general lack of knowledge of how to interact with local government, and a lack of language accessibility.
The mobile app is not available in Spanish, but Mendenhall said her administration is working to change that.
“We hired a language-access coordinator last year, and they’re helping us, among other city platforms, to [translate] into Spanish,” Mendenhall said, “and hopefully, in the future, also other languages.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall repairs a pothole after announcing the city's Pothole Palooza on Tuesday, April 11, 2023.
To see where the city has repaired potholes and to submit a repair request, visit the city’s website.
The all-hands-on-deck effort comes at no additional cost to the city because the crews are made up of existing employees and the cost of asphalt repairs is baked into the city budget.
Crookston said the city’s repair efforts won’t end with the blitz and will continue year-round.
