February/March 1983 RAIN Page 15 Neighbors fixing a street the City won't fix, 1929. Is There a Pothole in Your Future? By Steve Johnson Imagine you are the first person to discover a pothole. No big deal, just your regular pothole. You can nimbly avoid it, steering your automobile away from it. You can expect someone else to take care of it — right? Wrong. Not if you want lower taxes too. As it is now, the pothole will end up on some civil servant's work log, and depending on the size of the budget for potholes, along with a frightfully complex decision-making process, it might get fixed. But if THEY don't fix the pothole, who will? Well, if there were no government, you, or a neighbor, or fellow- traveler of the road might take it upon yourselves. There could be a legal compact that the first person to discover the pothole had to fix it. Increase the police force to watch for violators, and.... What we do now is, by voting, sign a compact with elected officials, who turn around and make compacts with others to carry out work that will fulfill the articles of the compact. The pothole is someone's problem. Unless we decide to live with potholes, repairing them is going to cost someone something, somehow. Apparently, from the kind of support shown for lower taxes and less government, many people don't think the present compact for fixing potholes — and many other services — is working too well. Perhaps in between the US and THEM, there are intermediate solutions. Sometimes having a large centralized pothole department might be the most effective way to take care of that problem; but then again maybe there are other solutions. In Philadelphia, the city council has initiated a process of establishing a formal partnership with neighborhood groups for delivery of some city services. One contract area would involve neighborhoods in the repair of potholes with "cold patches," as a way of preventing further damage, as well as in the inspection and reporting of extensive damage to the proper municipal government office. This kind of "pothole watch" in Philadelphia, is only one example among many, where new compacts are being forged between citizens, private corporations, neighborhood and community based organizations, and government agencies, to carry out mainline municipal services. What other kinds of services are we talking about? In a special report on the role of neighborhood associations in carrying out municipal services, the National Association of Neighborhoods provides this list: residential solid waste collection, street and parking lot repair and cleaning, snow plowing/sanding, tree planting/tree trimming, operation of parking lots and garages, operation and maintenance of para-transit systems, crime prevention patrols, fire protection, child welfare programs, operation of cultural and arts programs, building maintenance and building security — to name a few. Recently, municipal governments have opened up the
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