Mad props to Council President Eric Garcetti (CD13) for responding to a reader's plaintive wail about the poor condition of his neighborhood streets in last weeks Rumblings & Bumblings. On the Eric Garcetti blog, Garcetti says (we're taking the highlights, here. Full post on his blog):
First question: why do asphalt streets have more repair work done than concrete streets, and why have some streets been paved more than once in recent memory?
Concrete streets are more difficult. Since it's pretty much cost-prohibitive to repair them to their original state, the Bureau of Street Services (BOSS) prefers to fix them by paving them over with asphalt—which many residents, fond of the concrete streets, object to. Federal and state dollars that could be used for concrete street repair become available annually, but there is heavy competition between worthy neighborhood projects for those funds. Second question: Why are we doing temporary street sweeping on certain blocks of Atwater Village when we could just add a few signs and have regular street sweeping?
Sadly, I can't add city services simply by placing a sign on a street. The addition of new blocks to the street-sweeping route requires an allocation from resources that are already very scarce. The writer mentions a temporary program, probably the one we conducted between Atwater Street and Silver Lake Boulevard. We were able to persuade the BOSS [Bureau of Street Services, not the Mayor - ed.] to extend the six-month program for a second six months, but they had to end it after the first renewal. I continue to keep an eye out for new funds that could address this problem.
Thank Mr. Garcetti for his informative response by voting for him as often as possible.