Understaffed and working overtime, Public Works wants help with a backlog of potholes

They’re coarse, they’re shadowed, they’re strangely wet. Many hibernate in the summer and rear in the winter. When left alone, they can snap an axle or twist an ankle. And when the rains subsided this past February, there were 53,000 more of them across Long Beach.

Potholes, along with rickety sidewalks and cracked-up streets, are a major part of this year’s city budget, as officials look to fund a war on disrepair along the pesky arterials that can blow out your tire or spill your coffee.

Discussion came before the public Tuesday night, as the City Council listened to a presentation by its Public Works Department.

“We are a large department and we have a lot of responsibilities,” Public Works Director Eric Lopez began in his remarks. “We do our best to deliver our services the most effective and efficient way possible.”

Proposals, tied closely to the city’s Elevate ’28 Infrastructure Plan, include expanding city crews, from tripling its piloted, in-house concrete crew to unveiling “prototype” trucks custom-fitted for pothole repair. The presentation also included goals for the coming year: 30,000 square feet of repaved concrete, 15 million square feet of resealed road, and most of the once 63,000-strong backlog of potholes filled.

Specific dollar amounts for each program were not included in Tuesday’s presentation. Past discussion on the Elevate ’28 program, funded largely through the city’s Measure A tax, has shown $327 million set aside for mobility and safety improvements, including repairs to major corridors, alleyways, potholes and drainage systems.

Elevate ’28 is a five-year series (fiscal years ’23 to ’27) of planned infrastructure projects: new parks and bridges, freshly paved roadways and revisioned commercial centers. The intention, as the name implies, is to prepare the city as a future host for the Olympic Games, which will require accepting thousands of inbound tourists in need of food, lodging and a way to get around.

Lopez noted that prior to the storms last winter, the city had under 10,000 potholes left to fill. The season, which spans October to February, wrought 23 inches of rain on Long Beach — 11.75 inches above average — which left streets pockmarked with potholes.

“I love rain, but I hate potholes,” Lopez said. “Unfortunately, rain creates potholes.”

Following these “hellacious storms,” Public Service Bureau Manager Marc Wright said, crews have since worked on six-day schedules to fill an average of 5,000 potholes a month. As of this week, he added, the city has about 35,000 remaining potholes.

Officials agreed the goal is to return to pre-storm numbers. “And then keep going, all the way down to zero,” Lopez said.

These goals are doable, officials continued, touting their accomplishments from the past year: 130 miles of fixed arterial and residential roads, 9 million square feet of sealed asphalt and 10 miles of repainted red curbs. They’ve also installed 600 new pedestrian ramps, trimmed 20,000 trees and replaced 3,300 traffic signs.

“I’m seeing a lot happen across the city,” said Mayor Rex Richardson. “(In) every council district,  I’m seeing slurry seals, potholes, major construction projects and let’s not sneeze about what’s happening, you’re managing the biggest infrastructure plan in our city’s history, with Elevate ’28.”

But with more than 1,100 miles of streets to maintain, the city spends its summer months playing catch-up on potholes and dilapidated roads, which spawn faster in wet months than residents can report them.

But questions remain as to whether these expansions will have a real impact.

According to the city’s 2023 “Pavement Condition Index,” or PCI — its most recently recorded — Long Beach streets averaged 56 out of 100, with one-third of its roadways rated in poor or very poor condition. The score has slowly declined since 2017, when it earned a 62.

Wright said that with the city’s recent revamping of its slurry program, crews will seal nearly 30 million square feet of roads before they receive a new PCI rating in 2025. “I am really looking forward to seeing how it changes,” he said.

Long Beach also has a 20-plus year backlog of needed repairs to concrete walkways and gutters, and only so much time before winter storms shutter slurry crews until the spring. It’s a seemingly endless war against asphalt atrophy, fought along the many “old streets” that pervade the city of Long Beach.

“We’re fighting this battle every year after the rainy season to get out there and make our streets and right-of-ways safe,” Wright said.

And despite a slight improvement year-to-year, the department is also feeling the weight of vacancies — 127 positions, or 17% departmentwide, with higher rates among maintenance crews.

“You have to realize when we’re working people six days a week, if a virus comes and people get sick, that cuts into how we can perform,” Wright said. “So when we have these vacancies, there’s no room for error. Everyone needs to show up.”

Nevertheless, Lopez said, immaculate maintenance of the city’s streets would require far more staffing and funding — $3.5 billion to pave away all of its liabilities.

“The amount of funding we need to repair everything, every street, every sidewalk, every pothole, every storm drain system, exceeds the actual available funding,” Lopez said.

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