JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Neighbors in a quiet Northside community are having problems with a pothole that has opened up in the last few months.
Jacksonville local Kathi Lang-Thorbs owns a home in front of that hole, and made sure to call the city.
"We contacted the city about that, they came out within a day and brought the barricades, but that's about all that's been done," said Lang-Thorbs.
The city gave us her call log, which states she has contacted them multiple times. They say they gave her an estimated completion date of June 10 to get that hole fixed. But Lang-Thorbs said that's too far away, and the hole keeps growing.
"There are kids in this neighborhood one of them could run across one of the holes, the barricade is here, but you can see the hole's bigger and bigger; will it be sufficient to cover it?" she said.
She said she concerned there is a bigger problem in her neighborhood. Last year, she said holes started popping up on her property near the street. She said she called the city and they filled them with dirt, but she said the holes on her property are also back. And now she wants the city to take a closer look at the area in front of her home.
"I asked the city to send an engineer not just to fill a hole because that's just putting a Band-Aid on the situation," said Lang-Thorbs.
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Action News asked the city about her pothole issue, and others. We wanted to know how many active holes, or cave-ins, there are in the city. We also wanted to know how they decide which holes to fix first. Here is there response:
<br/>"We have made significant progress in our cave-in numbers; in July 2014, we had 249 "in progress" issues.<br/> <br/> "Whether a cave-in is repaired by in-house staff or by contract depends on the complexity of the problem; typically, anything deeper than 5' and/or which require other special or unique accommodations are referred to our continuous Storm Sewer Replacement/Repair contractor, Jax Utilities.<br/> <br/> "The scheduling for contract work depends on a number of factors, the highest being liability/public safety with consideration of funding available to complete the work. All things being equal, issues of like type and severity are handled in the order they are received. When a problem cannot be immediately addressed, we place barricades and, when appropriate, make the area as stable as possible until the repair can be completed.<br/> <br/> "Managing in-house work is very similar, in that problems that present a greater risk to the general public tend to be handled first; for example, issues "in road" would typically be handled before an issue "off road," and those in the travel lanes of a road would be handled before those on the side of the road. But again, when issues have generally the same conditions, they're handled chronologically.<br/> <br/> "This particular case is currently logged as an in-house 'in road' issue. There are three issues chronologically ahead of it in this service area. It is not uncommon for holes to get bigger, and while we would love to fix them all immediately, it is simply not possible. We typically won't go back out to a site unless the situation has changed appreciably and there is an imminent threat to private property (house, etc.) or the traveling public. We typically don't patch or cover cave-ins prior to repair because we don't want to give anyone a false sense of safety – holes in the street or yard should be avoided, and barricades on site should be left in place."<br/>
The city also tells us 8 cave – ins in Jacksonville need to be investigated. They say there are 170 that need to be fixed “in-house.” They say there are another 70 that need to be fixed through contractors.
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