CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi residents know all to well that driving through the city, you’re bound to run into at least one or two potholes.
Rod and Starr Alva live on Birch Place and Blackjack Place and said they have been dealing with the problem for years. They said the city of Corpus Christi came out to fix a few potholes on their street last year, but they resurfaced.
Starr Alva is a bus driver for CCISD and said she knows all to well they’re all throughout the city and not just on her street.
“Potholes are really bad during my morning and afternoon routes. And sometimes the children…I have to go really slow because they’re seat belted in but still the bus is like back and forth, and I even had to have hydraulic shocks replaced,” she said.
The city of Corpus Christi started working on repairing potholes throughout the city on Monday through their Saving Our Streets initiative. They said in the next 30-45 days they would repair potholes that were requested by residents when they did their pothole blitz, but they never got to.
However, Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo said this is a one-time repair. When asked why they are not repairing entire streets, Guajardo said, “unfortunately that takes a little bit longer. You have to identify which street needs what kind of repair.”
The city has also hit a few bumps in the road with their six month backlog of repairs. They are facing a 50 percent shortage of workers in the streets division.
“We’ve already asked all the other rest of the departments to assist in any which way they can with the staffing shortage that we need in street maintenance,” Rolando Mata, the director of public works said.
Corpus Christi is partnering with private sector companies Bay Limited and Reytec Construction Resources in order to speed the pothole process up.
Gregg Reyes, the president and CEO of Reytec said they use new water-based technology that’s ecologically friendly in order to help make the process speedy.
“We can do twice as many in one day as you do traditionally,” he said.
Rod and Starr Alva are hoping this will help, and have one message to the city.
“That they can get the roads fixed and fixed correctly to where they don’t have to come back,” Starr Alva said.
