Ask The Answer Person: Your pothole questions!

Posted: Mon, Apr 15, 2019 12:05 PM

The much-despised pothole

(Jim asks: "What's up with all the potholes near McDonald's in Decorah?" and John asks, "Why do we have to drive through the holes in the pavement at the "mail-in" boxes curb side at the U.S. Post Office? There are small holes and there are huge holes. Not only are they not going away they are getting deeper. Let's hope repair is on the way before we lose someone (and their car)."):

The Answer Person says: "We answered the question about McDonald's last year, but potholes keep coming back each spring!

When motorists encounter a pothole, they usually curse the city or state or governmental in general. But some very large potholes are on property that isn't publicly-owned.

Take, for instance, the Centrum Plaza, which is a privately-owned shopping center. When potholes appeared near Mc Donald's a little more than a year ago, Noddle Development took care of filling in those potholes.

Or take the Decorah Post Office, which is housed in a building which is owned by out-of-town investors, despite having 'Decorah' in the name.

The answer in both cases is that it's not local government that's at fault. Which means that, while you can always march down to City Hall or the Street Department Office to complain about what that pothole did to your car's suspension, you'll have to ask the property owner to fix the problem--which is always a tougher job.

Here are two of our previous stories about this problem: https://www.decorahnews.com/archived-stories/2017/12/18128.html and
https://www.decorahnews.com/archived-stories/2013/06/5743.html