I wonder if that goes for pot holes and the sad condition of Havre’s streets also? Coincidently this announcement by the Chamber was forwarded to me at the same time as a couple of e-mails sent to our tip line by one of our readers (Fuelburner1969) who has been wondering if we could get together some volunteers to help the city crew patch the streets and fill some potholes.
Well I really don’t know – Why not?
People I have talked to say filling potholes isn’t rocket science so if some of these guys want to show up at the city shop on cleanup day with their pickups to get a load of cold mix and a couple of traffic cones why couldn’t the community lend a hand to this monumental task that is overwhelming the city street crews? If they did it the same weekend as the Havre Pride cleanup we would already have safety and city personnel available to oversee the work and a few donated hours times many willing hands would make short work of a few of the problem areas.
Anyone interested in taking Fuelburner1969 up on his idea?
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| If these directions are how you do it I would venture to say that some volunteer labor could indeed handle it |
Sounds like a great idea. People that live north of Joplin use to do this exact thing. Every spring the county would bring out a load of asphalt and about 20 guys would spend the day repairing the road.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter that's how most of the gravel was hauled onto the north Joplin and Inverness roads. All the farmers hauled gravel from a county pit and the county spread it. It worked great.
3 full hours-most people in Havre will not have that much time to spare
ReplyDeleteCall the public works and see if this is ok with them. I would venture a guess that there will be some sort of problem with any untrained shovelers and tampers cutting into the professional pot hole fillers work
ReplyDeleteBut then again I am cynical. If they go for it I will bring the Ho-Hos and coffee
I'm with Freddy. I would volunteer and I think it's a great idea but I'm sure the Mayor, Council or Public Works director will have some liability issue, or some insurance issue, or we don't have the supplies and equipment issue or Lord knows what kind of reason this cannot be done.
ReplyDeleteJust a quick question but-
ReplyDeleteIsn't this what we PAY these people to do?
Where does it end? Should we all take individual plastic bags of our garbage out to the dump?
Should we take our sewage in 5 gallon buckets to the treatment plant?
Should we all carry guns downtown to stop crime and get on ladders to change stop light and street light bulbs? Can I have a wrench that fits a fire hydrant?
We pool our tax dollars to do these jobs. We expect our city to obtain proper equipment and employ trained people to do these tasks.
I would hope it would be more efficient to hold our elected representives accountable to make sure these tasks are done timely and efficiently with our tax dollars.
I would like to help but DeConstructor makes a good point.
ReplyDeleteYes Decon that is what we pay them to do but there are not enough city workers to go around. If I am not mistaken there are only about 12 or so full time year around workers. Now you take 3 for garbage pickup 1 on the big tub truck 1 on the old style rear load garbage truck 2 reading water meaters 2 street sweepers 1 painting curbs and x walks that only leaves 1 or 2 to fix pot holes you do the math we have had water breaks and other things happen so either we as a community help out or pay more tax and hire more workers.
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ReplyDeleteAre you seriously suggesting on THIS board that the city workers are laboring at 100% capacity?
You may get some comments on that one. I am in no way stating that people employed by the city are lazy, however, I think there are some on this board that may disagree when they see six guys around a hole and 5 of them holding up shovels.
For what it is worth, I am not a Tea Bagger and think we all should not only pay MORE taxes, we should expect MORE services from our local government. This may save money in the long term, such as this case, where proper SNOW REMOVAL would have left Havre streets in much better condition than they are now.
I agree with you De... that it's not our job but the job is not getting done. I think I lost some teeth on the college hill last week. I had to take that route as the fitness center road was closed (because the COUNTY was fixing pot holes!) YES! We do pay for these services and I am frustrated with the "no money" excuse. City Employees just got another 3% raise. Freeze the wages just one year and fix the city!
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ReplyDeleteYes decon wouldn't that be nice to get more and pay less. In the real world that is not going to happen, I would like to get more gas for $20.00 I would like to get more bags of groceries for $100.00 but the fact is that is not going to happen either. I did not say that the workers were all laboring at 100% but I know that the city has not replaced many workers who have retired or quit to go to higher paying jobs. When you talk of wage freezes you may want to compair the wages first to other jobs in Havre. You do not get equiptment operators with the skills to dig next to gas lines and power lines water lines and sewer lines for next to nothing wages. I would like to see what you think that shovel holding worker is worth when you have sewer backing up in your home. If you look at what the dollar will buy now these same workers were really making more in 1980 than they do now. I just would like people to realize that this is our town and we all may have to help to make it a better place to live. If you see garbage on the ground pick it up, if you see a chance to make something better do it, don't wait for someone else to do it then complain if it dosen't happen.
ReplyDeleteThe Corrector sent off an e-mail to numerous Havre City Council members and Havre’s Director of Public Works with Fuelburner1969’s idea a few days ago to see if they would be willing to implement pot hole patching into this year’s Havre Pride day and as of tonight NO RESPONSE at all.
ReplyDeleteWe also sent the Chamber of Commerce an e-mail today making the same offer so maybe they will show more interest.
Only time will tell
to fuel burner what happened to that expensive pothole filling machine we paid for?I haven't seen that out last year or this year.The city crews have poor managers and they need to go,bottom line both of them are overpaid idiots.Why is it that other cities can keep up?So when you are trying to dodge potholes or sliding down the streets sideways, just smile and remember Fuelburners words of wisdom.
ReplyDeleteDo they even need the expensive 'pot hole filling machine'?
ReplyDeleteThere are many well qualified, well tooled contractors very capable of handling this mess. The city should admit their error of not properly removing the snow which caused the excess damage to the streets and immediately bring in people that can handle the task.
IIRC, years ago before 1st street was rebuilt, Patrick was in front of the Golden Spike about once a week to repair waterbreaks/sinkholes.
A quick bid process should go out and one of these local businesses should be awarded a contract to fix these holes.
It would be better and faster to use skid steers,dump trucks and rollers than volunteers with a shovels and hand tampers.
Get the job done, do it right, and do not put our streets in this position again.
Your wasting your breath here. No one from the city will even respond because they don't care what we think and they definetly won't do anything that would cause them to get out of the office chair
ReplyDeleteDecon is right had the city removed the snow the potholes would not have been such an issue when the spring thaw happened.
ReplyDeleteI know they are redoing it all next year but in the mean time it's a huge issue and will continue to be. I see today they "fixed" part of that section of road. I'm glad they patched it but I honestly think it's almost as rough as it was before.
I think the best solution at this point is to tear up what's there and leave it as a dirt road they can run a grader over every so often.
Even though no one has replied to the items sent to the city and chamber I find it interesting that after said items were sent now today something was done. People of the city may not like this blog BUT regardless of that fact it still seems when items are addressed here something magically happens shortly after that.
Go Fuelburner
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