Omaha's Answer to Pothole Complaints: a New Dirt Road
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/omahas-answer-pothole-complaints-dirt-road-41421071
For miles and miles Omaha stretches on, one tidy, suburban-style neighborhood after another filled with modern low-slung houses set on spacious lawns with towering oaks and elms.
It's a model of comfortable mid-American living, with one unusual exception: thanks to a quirk in how Omaha developed, about 300 miles of streets in these nice neighborhoods are pitted with potholes almost big enough to swallow an SUV.
The bad roads have been both an anomaly and a source of complaints for years. But recently, they've become the center of a mini-crisis after local officials began dispatching crews to tear up the asphalt in the neighborhoods and turn the streets back into dirt roads, much like what existed in the city's frontier days.
The sudden appearance of miles of dirt road in the midst of urban Omaha has prompted angry protests by residents and showcased a conflict over the public services homeowners should expect when a modern city outgrows some of its old real estate agreements.
"No letter, no notice. We just came home on a Tuesday, and our street was ground up," said Joe Skradski, a dentist who lives on 113th Street, where a dozen $400,000-and-up houses now line a dirt path. "Since then, it's been nothing short of a nightmare."
Nearly every U.S. city faces a backlog of needed roadwork as streets built decades ago wear out, but the situation is especially vexing in Omaha, a sprawling city of 435,000 people with 4,800 miles of road and not enough tax revenue to maintain them.
Decades ago, a number of developers sought permission to lay down asphalt roads rather than longer-lasting concrete in several sections in the middle of town, and to skip installing curbs and gutters preferred by the city. The city agreed, with the understanding that homeowners be responsible for occasional repaving. Some substandard roads also were in areas once outside the city but that were later annexed.
For years, the arrangement held up. But as the roads began to age and crumble, and as new residents replaced the original homeowners, resentment intensified about a city government that maintained some neighborhoods while ignoring others.
Said neighbor Bill Manhart, "It's like living in the country, but in the middle of the city...There's so much dust and mud on the street, what's the point?"
A series of meeting between city officials and residents of the affected neighborhoods, which include about 10,000 houses, hasn't resolved the problem.
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According to urban planners, the dispute is a case study in how short-term deals that cities make about seemingly minor issues can backfire when the cities and circumstances change.
Dan Piatkowski, an assistant professor of regional planning at the University of Nebraska, said the dispute is also forcing residents to think about what they get from government. This is especially useful, he said, in a conservative state like Nebraska that is skeptical of government spending.
Many conservatives believe "smaller government is better, but we still want our roads to function," he said.
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