Tacoma: The city of cratered streets

The City of Tacoma has done an abysmal job of maintaining its streets. Give it credit, though, for letting everyone know how bad those streets are.

Anyone who lives in Tacoma or drives through its neighborhood streets knows that many of them would be at home in a third world city. Some of them look as if they’ve been cratered by military explosives. Others have been patched and repatched so many times that drivers venture upon them at their car’s peril.

There can’t be many other cities on the West Coast whose neighborhood streets have been more neglected. Until Tacoma’s leaders began taking the problem seriously a few years ago, the city budget contained little money for filling potholes – and none for the resurfacing many of the roads were due for eternities ago.

Road maintenance is an easy place to save money in the short term, but the bill eventually comes due with a vengeance. That’s especially true in a rainy climate. When pavement cracks aren’t repaired, water penetrates the surface and accelerates the ruin. Instead of routine maintenance, the street winds up needing massive repairs.

A year ago, the City Council finally budgeted real money – $2.25 million a year – to fix the neighborhood streets. Better late than never. As of February, the funding was expected to get Tacoma’s worst streets fixed in 11 years.

No such luck. It turns out that several factors, including the downturn in real estate revenues and a legal mandate to install wheelchair ramps when streets are overhauled, are going to stretch the timetable out at least nine more discouraging years.

Thanks to a survey the city launched in 2006, we know the problem’s staggering magnitude. Of Tacoma’s 8,610 residential blocks, 6,400 have streets that need at least some work. Of those, 3,376 are rated “very poor,” “partially failed” or “failed.” More than half of Tacoma’s neighborhood streets are officially in poor condition.

Welcome to Mexico City – if that’s not being unfair to Mexico City.

A voter-approved bond measure is the only obvious way to fast-track the repairs. The council put such a measure on the ballot in 2006, but it failed, 52-48 percent. But 48 percent is not nothing.

There’s a good argument for retooling the measure, telling voters more clearly what it would buy, and asking them again if they want to pay more to let the city catch up on the deferred maintenance.

If Tacoma officials go for another ballot measure, they might have a better chance of success if they publicly acknowledged that the city government dug itself into this massive pothole through decades of irresponsibility.

Confession, remorse and a vow to reform might convince some opponents of the 2006 measure to change their minds on a bailout.