Road rage January 17, 2009
Posted by wesaday in Politics.Tags: Horrible city government
1 comment so far
No not the kind you think. When we bought our house several years ago, one of the things that appealed to us was that the road was a dead end road. The place used to be an orchard/farm and most of the road was a one lane country road. A nice quiet neighborhood, very little traffic on a private road. Once a year a private company would come in and patch the road. Little traffic so the road wasn’t all that bad most of the time.
- Looking north from my house
The road here is approximately 12 feet wide. Notice the lack of drainage and sidewalks.Well in 2007 or maybe early 2008 some moron in the city decided that our road didn’t need to be private anymore. So without any regard for the residents wishes or safety they made an arbitrary decision to open our road as a thouroughfare without informing the residents of what was going on. We had no idea at the time that they was removing the barrier at the end of the street until the barrier was gone that the Indianapolis 500 had started racing down our road. Since opening the road up to the public, our road has deteriorated and of course it isn’t getting fixed.
This is the far north end of the road. It’s remained pretty much like that since we moved in about 5 years ago. Complaints to the city get ignored. I complained about this situation in May 2008 and was told that there were “4 projects” going that would fix the road in 2008. Ha! Of course not. These pictures were taken mid Januaray 2009. As you can plainly tell the road has not been fixed nor has there been any attempt to. 
Looking north from the other end of the street. This is the worst section of the road. 
Notice still the lack of curbs, sidewalks and if you are really observant, you will notice that there are not even street lights!
Seeing that contacting the city road department didn’t get anywhere, I had a radical idea or going over their heads. I would email the mayor and the city council to come over and talk my evening walk with me and see for themselves how bad the road is an how incredilby dangerous it was to walk down the road in the dark.
Not to mention that kids play in the street. Yes the one lane country road where dumb ass teenagers fly down the road at 40 – 50 mph without hands on the wheel because they are too busy texting. Well anyway, the mayor and the city council do not have an email address. But I did find an email address for something call the Citizen Advocate. I thought, “Ah ha! Perfect. Who better to champion the cause for the poor downtrodden citizen against the unrightgeous city government!” 
So I contacted her at the end of December telling her that the road was totally substandard and not acceptable. And that I owuld be more than happy to escort the mayor and anyone else around on my evening walks to see for themselves. After all, they would not stand of their street to look like this I do not see why they would expect me to.
The advocate passed my email along to the road department to answer (Of course, what else did you expect to happen? Some sort of action?) and so far nothing.
Looking south down the street. For the space of 4 houses the road is wider, there are sidewalks and street lights. So yes I am mad about the condition of the street my house sits on. Seeing that the city ruined the neighborhood, I don’ t have much of a chance selling my house with the street in that condition so we can moved to a safer, quieter neighborhood.
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