Mr. Pothole Really Is

Menino has gained a reputation as a mayor who gets the things like filling potholes done, but a deeply researched piece from the Boston Globe by Donovan Slack, Gone to Pot in Boston, argues that Menino has done the exact opposite. Menino's policies lead to potholes which never should have come into being.

[Pavement specialists] say the city ignores nationally recognized paving standards and that Boston's proliferation of potholes could be reduced with a few simple steps.
The city allows utility companies and others who cut into roads some 10,000 times a year to make flimsy temporary patches. Instead of making solid repairs immediately, the city often waits years while heavy city traffic and brutal winters wrench the patches apart, creating moonscapes of craters on some streets.

This is city policy for one simple reason: greed. Utilities pay into a fund run by Public Works Commissioner Joseph Casazza to make permanent road repairs. Casazza gets around to the repairs when he pleases.

Councilor at Large Maura A. Hennigan, who is running for mayor and has spent the last two years harping on Mayor Thomas M. Menino's pothole policies, said the city is addicted to the money it collects from utility companies and others. The city is reluctant to give up the millions it brings in each year in order to force the companies to make better repairs, she said.
''They collect this money and then they hoard it," she said. ''It's an ongoing revenue stream for them. How can they go out and yell at them, because they'll just say, 'Well, what are we paying the city for?' "

An accompanying graphic details that one newly repaved 9-block stretch of Boylston St. already has 37 new roadcuts permitted. Despite a 5-year moratorium on non-emergency cuts after the repaving, permits for 24 such cuts were issued.