Originally Posted by Roody
Potholes crop up predictably every late winter and spring. Highway budgets should be planned to take care of them quickly and efficiently (within a few hours of their appearance). If this doesn't happen, your political leaders should be voted out of office. Ours were!
We had a really amusing municipal election last fall - the old mayor, after 3 or 4 terms in office, lost and newbie got in with a huge margin. However nearly every city councillor was re-elected. So we voted for change, but more of the same too.
A while ago, the Ontario provincial government downloaded a bunch of things to cites - they abolished regional roads and made them all municipal; health care, hospitals, welfare, and social housing became municipal; and a great of infrastructure was handed off. The city of Ottawa now owns thousands of low-rent housing units it can't afford to fix, and never should have owned, for example. As a result balancing the books has been extremely difficult - and the forced amalgamation of five municipalities and a handful of rural townships by that same government didn't help.
The roads are being worked on, however the worst roads are getting the least repair - it makes more financial sense to re-build the road-bed, sewers, power lines, etc. all at once. What this means, however, is that many roads are staying in poor shape as we wait for their turn at a re-build.