alt Hacker NewsCitizens should have a say in how municipalities order work. If they're not given that say through less-disruptive means, then they can choose to harmlessly tag places where maintenance is failing.
Why are we excusing civic inaction because it might cause an unexpected schedule change for road crews? Why am I supposed to be so full of concern for the ease of their schedule that I'm ok with broken streets?
In short, c'mon, man.
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I appreciate the pushback, but I wasn't actually saying people shouldn't do this. If a neighbourhood is being neglected because of some incentive structure they're powerless to affect, then yeah, take some action.
I'm just compulsive in pointing out trade-offs, and this blog post (understandably) doesn't have an interview with the civil servant on the other side presenting their perspective, so I wanted to raise the question here in case someone knew how it worked.
This is just a dressed up way of saying "I don't care how the road crews work or who else they might be helping, I want them working on the problem I care about". You don't know if the crews are working on bigger problems (or bigger potholes), or they're working in a neighborhood you don't drive through and thus don't care about...if they aren't patching up your annoyance right now, then screw 'em, they suck at their job.
I've gone to our municipal planning meetings for these types of things, and there is always at least one person there with this sense of entitlement. They want to talk about "excusing civic inaction" or similar just like you, but when shown "this is what the crews are working on", the retort is "yeah, but that's not the pothole on my street" (with the usually unsaid "...so why should I give a phuk about those people").
These people usually show up at other meetings to complain about having to pay taxes to pay for those repairs. But that's another little joy of local politics...