nothin Citizen — & Pothole! — Power | New Haven Independent

Citizen — & Pothole! — Power

Houston Public Media

Turner reports on potholes.

If you report a pothole on your street, the city will attend to it in 24 hours. The mayor may show up to help.

In Houston.

While it doesn’t suffer street-pavement-chewing snowstorms, Houston, like New Haven, has a pothole problem. In fact the potholes were a major issue in the mayoral campaign there last fall.

So the city’s new mayor, Sylvester Turner, has promised that his crews will respond within 24 hours to fix them. He personally grabbed a shovel and ran a machine to help fill one of them.

So far, with the help of citizens using SeeClickFix, the city has made good onthe promise 94 percent of the time

So reported Houston city government Deputy Director Frank Carmody on the latest edition of WNHH radio’s SeeClickFix Radio.” Carmody discussed potholes and other issues common to Houston and New Haven with SeeClickRadio co-hosts Caroline Smith and Ben Berkowitz of the New Haven-based problem-solving website.

Aging infrastructre, neglected for too many years, led to what has become a pothole epidemic” in the Texas city, Carmody said. SeeClickFix’s Houston site bursts with daily pothole sightings.

On the WNHH program, Carmody listened to Berkowitz discuss the complaints du jour in New Haven — about this past weekend’s 12-inch snowfall.

Paul Bass Photos

SeeClickFix Radio co-hosts Berkowitz and Smith in the WNHH studio.

One recurrent complaint involved not city snow-clearance performance —which overall has earned high marks — but the neglect of properties owned by absentee banks. Berkowitz noted complaints about such houses on Fairfield Street and Westwood Road where the sidewalks were left unshoveled. New Haven government’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative, responded to the postings and promised to get on the case; New Haven has the legal right to charge banks for clean-up work city crews do for them; it can also fine them $99 a day for blight, which it has done.

Houston doesn’t have a law for levying such fees, Carmody said. It has had a problem with dangerous empty buildings inherited by banks; city orders generally give them 360 days to fix them, he said.

Citizen-inspired solutions to problems were one common theme on the program.

Berkowitz reported on several properties where SeeClickFix posters responded to calls to shovel out properties where occupants weren’t able to; the website has inspired such clean-ups in New Haven for several winters now. One New Havener, named James Trimble, responded to separate postings with his shovel, helping clear sidewalks at Fountain Avenue and Ramsdell Street (freeing access to a bus stop) and on Alden Avenue.

In Houston, citizen volunteers haven’t had snow to clear, but they have painted over graffiti, Carmody said. They have also helped clear wet furniture and carpets out of homes after recent floods.

To listen to the entire episode, click on or download the above sound file. Or subscribe to WNHH’s new podcast Dateline New Haven,” where episodes of the show will be delivered directly to your phone or smart device. (Click here for details on how to subscribe.)

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