Plugging potholes? Tackle weeds next

The notion of taking to Twitter to report potholes to city government is one we like. How quick! How convenient! Just take a photo of a pothole on a city-maintained road, add the location and tag @PostAPotholeSF. That’s it. Of course, do be sure to pull over to tweet — we would not want to see drivers using their phones illegally while navigating crumbling city streets.

Don’t like Twitter? Complainants can take to Facebook using the city of Santa Fe page to report potholes or even call 505-955-6949. The idea is to let city staff know where there is a problem; in return, Mayor Javier Gonzales promises the hole will be fixed within 72 hours, in most cases. That’s fast action. But why stop with potholes? Let’s start a city Twitter account called @whackaweedSF, where citizens can tweet their photos of offensive overgrowth to city leaders. Medians, roundabouts, unsightly patches in the parks, all the places that appear unkempt and ugly. In return, someone — anyone — would come out and pull those weeds. The medians on Cerrillos Road appear to be sprouting trees, they are so overgrown between St. Michael’s Drive and Camino Carlos Rey.

Keep going, though. There’s a need for @getgraffitiSF, too. Citizens can post graffiti photos and perhaps, rather than unpleasant scrawls remaining on park fences or trash cans for months — months — city crews can clean up our public spaces within a few days of defacement. The notion that graffiti can remain untouched from winter to spring and now summer only encourages more tagging. Quick reporting could turn that around. For dying trees and vegetation, try @waterNowSF, so that parks workers can attend to trees and plants that need a drink. Think how many plant lives could be saved!

Until then, we’ll keep our eyes on @PostAPotholeSF, looking for the streets to avoid and watching to see if repairs happen quickly. By Friday afternoon, the plucky account had 79 followers. The city also is using tweets to alert drivers about road work being done on non-city-maintained roads, including nighttime work being scheduled on St. Francis Drive that began Sunday (St. Francis is maintained by the state).

To be fair to city workers, plugging potholes is no easy job. With Santa Fe’s freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw cycle in overdrive this year, the streets were hit harder than usual. Crews have estimated they have repaired more than 1,000 potholes since the spring thaw. That’s a lot of holes to plug. Not fixing the damage, though, is not acceptable. We’re pleased to see that some $300,000 is set aside in the city budget for on-call street repair and maintenance in the 2018 fiscal year, which began July 1.

So, while it is true that potholes are a “fact of life,” we like that city leaders want to eliminate them anyway. Cars and trucks everywhere, as well as their drivers, are grateful. Now, let’s tackle weeds and graffiti, more facts of life that we are unwilling to accept.