Here's a headline: "Town invites citizens to sponsor pothole repairs." Does that surprise you? Chances are, you would think there's a clever municipality out there somewhere. After all, organizations and individuals already sponsor some highway maintenance by removing trash. In return, they get a sign with their name by the roadside. Everybody wins. Why not with potholes?
The fact is, we're kidding. Well, sort of. Pothole season is here and, April Fools season notwithstanding, maybe it's time to take what turns out to be a gag with a grain of seriousness.
The 2014-15 winter has left Baltimore County roads with an abundance of scars. This especially fierce cycle of freezing and thawing, which causes potholes, lasted until the end of March, making it a bad year for asphalt eruptions and the resulting teeth-rattling jolt when your car hits one.
Baltimore County officials said they anticipated filling 10,000 potholes in March alone (the county filled 63,732 for the entirety of 2014). County crews will continue their search for the pesky pits in April. Citizen-reported holes, by the way, get priority.
At an average cost of $25.36 for each repaired pothole, the county last year spent $1.6 million on the piecemeal patchwork. If you'll notice, however, $25.36 could be the cost of a meal in a restaurant, a bottle of wine or someone's birthday gift. A repaired pothole is a gift an individual or group could give the community as a whole, much as a sponsored stretch of highway is a civic good deed for all to enjoy.
Of course, there's the issue of handing out credit. Those who sponsor clean highways get a sign to let passing motorists know who's responsible for the litter-free berm they are driving along. You could do the same for potholes, though on some stretches of road that would be a heck of a lot of signs.
But what if you could sponsor a pothole repair — heck, why not a whole block's worth of pavement patch-up — at $40 per pothole. Admittedly, that's higher than the county's per-hole cost, but we're allowing for a little extra revenue to cover administration. The county could even sponsor a website or run an ad in the newspaper to let people know who paid for the repair.
Look, we're not highway maintenance engineers, just observers dismayed by pothole proliferation. This might even be worth considering, no kidding.