Postcards: Pothole Policy and the America's Energy Future (Pt. 1)

Dear Fellow Expat:

In the Florida Republic, we own our roads.

My property parcel stretches into the center of the street. My neighbor has half. I have the other – maybe a 60-yard stretch.

We’re supposed to (but not required) to take care of our parcels. My neighbors to the left and right do the same.

Nothing major.

Clear off a squirrel that found his end on the road, or pick up trash.

It creates accountability.

If a chip in the road does form, I can take a trip to Lowe’s.

I can buy a small bag of cold mix asphalt, stir it up, and patch the road.

That way, it doesn’t slowly chip away into a big pothole as delivery trucks and construction teams whip down the street.

It’ll cost me twenty bucks.

“And I was going to Lowe’s anyway,” I tell my wife at least once a month.

When I tell this to friends in New York or Chicago, they’ll look at me like my dog does when it hears me try to sing.

Their head jerks and their ears rise.

Try That in a Big Town

You can’t fix your road in a Progressive American city like Baltimore.

Sure, you can start by calling 311 – a non-emergency line… but come on – the City Police received 1.68 million calls for service in 2021.

So, if you live in Baltimore and a pothole forms, you must start by attending a local City Council meeting.

Those are on Tuesday night, so if you have kids – don’t bother.

The parking lot beside the office contains potholes and empty drug vials.

You’ll wait an hour to gripe in line – and the Councilperson won’t show. Some interns (sorry, constituent assistants) will write down the street’s name.

They’ll do it after 45 minutes of complaints about snow removal, noise ordinances, and recent juvenile crime.

So, good luck becoming a priority.

Six weeks later, that pothole has doubled in size. You’ve flattened a tire. The Councilman is on leave due to a financial investigation, so meetings are off.

The office emailed you a website to visit – it hasn’t been updated since 2017. There’s a picture of the Councilman on the home page.

His arms are crossed to show that he “means business.”

You’ll fill out a constituent form and hit reply. But the screen leads to a 404 page – so you’ve just wasted 15 minutes writing a letter. It doesn’t save.

After you call to bug the constituent assistant again – while paying a few hundred bucks for a new tire – you finally get a new phone number.

You need to call Cheryl at the City’s Maintenance Division.

But you’ll soon learn Cheryl doesn’t work there anymore. She took a different job – this time with the State government. The person who took the call doesn’t know where she went.

“I just started,” the person says. “But the new woman is on maternity leave for four more weeks.” They can’t help you either because a ransomware attack destroyed the city’s Transportation database. The cyberattack also impacted local water utility bills as well.

After you’ve busted your shocks on that pothole a third time and hit your head on the ceiling of the roof of your car, you can start the year-long process of filing a legal claim against the city.

That’s a whole other city division – and an entire afternoon.

The next day, you’ll call back the Maintenance division.

They do have someone to take your call – her name is Denise – and she’s got a lot on her mind – and not much time for you.

“It’s a busy city, sir. We can’t fix every road order each day,” she says. “This isn’t a Wendy’s.”

Denise used to work at Wendy’s. She got her new job because the salon she worked at burned down. And it burned down because she was smoking.

There’s irony here because she now works for a city that banned smoking everywhere and wants to raise taxes on cigarettes for an anti-smoking campaign. But the mayor and that councilman under investigation recently stood on the ashes of that salon and gave a speech justifying the tax increase.

Now, they haven’t started to solve your problem after six months.

But good news. Your request is in the queue.

Denise tells you that she will send a worker to come out and “look at the hole” first.

They’re not going to fix it. They’re going to… look at it.

Also, a second guy will come to look at the hole too. He’s an apprentice, and the first guy gets a slight pay bump from the city for training the other guy to look at the hole.

This is a process.

A month later, after they look at the hole, well, that’s where things get tricky.

The Pothole Maintenance division has already spent its annual budget.

They spent the money driving around to look at holes and travel for a conference to discuss new ways to patch holes using “technology.”

They stayed in a charming Wynn hotel in Ocean City, Maryland.

It had a pool.

Don’t Ask That Question!

The good news is that this hole will be a priority because it is in a more trafficked city area. So, they’ll get to it – probably by the summer of 2024.

Now – this is where you go and ask the dumb question to Denise.

What if you just went out and fixed the hole yourself?

And – oh holy hell on a stick – “Sir, you do not want to do that.”

She explains, “I can’t tell you what to do,” she starts – almost daring you to do it, “But if you try to fix that hole yourself, you could damage city property. And it could cost you a lot.”

Don’t think about this too much, or blood may squirt out your nose.

Sure, you’d be fixing the hole, but if you somehow make it bigger or patch it with the wrong asphalt that doesn’t match the blend in the city’s contracts, they’ll have to undo your work, which might require even more road repair.

Of course, they’d have to come out and look at the damage you did first to investigate the pothole. That same apprentice will be there, and he’ll have a new “hole-looking” guy with him.

That could shut down the intersection for a week – and traffic is bad enough.

And what could it cost you?

Well – that’s where you learn about the City’s real priorities.

What happens if you use a toxic cement that gets into the sewer and impacts the Chesapeake Watershed's biodiversity?

It turns out that a government study conducted at Johns Hopkins found a particular chemical in standard asphalt mixes may be responsible for the depletion of the endangered Stripeback Darter.

There he is, right there… poor little guy.

For all you know, you’ve violated Maryland Endangered Species laws, and it doesn’t matter if you knew you were breaking the law. All that matters is you did it, with penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and a year of imprisonment.

So, you’re going to have to wait.

But don’t worry. After you blow out your tire again on that pothole and you can’t get to work… don’t worry that you’ve been fired for showing up late too many times.

You can go on unemployment… which is a very efficient State government process…

You’ll love it.

Cheryl works there now.

Tomorrow, I’ll explain how this relates to the U.S. electricity grid - and why we’re heading for serious trouble in our energy markets.

Stay positive,

Garrett Baldwin