The Pothole

Change in Our Community

By: Zoe Hoornbeek

My car lurches into the hole in the road. The front wheels face the impact first, then the back. In the alley behind my house, a giant pothole lies in the middle of the narrow road, unavoidable to my small Honda. This is how it began. Every morning at 5 am, I drove my car through this pothole on my way to work. The car jerked into the hole every time. My head hit the back of the headrest and my body jolted upwards. I got used to the feeling until one day on TikTok I saw a video about how to fill a hole with a couple of shovelfuls of pebbles. 

I went to the closest Ace Hardware that I could find and bought a small garden shovel. I took some pebbles from my front yard, hoping I had enough, and admired my handiwork. However, the pothole shouldn’t have been my problem. “I spent money on this,” I thought to myself. It began to irritate me. Why didn’t the city do something about this and the other potholes on the street? Everywhere I looked, I began to see potholes. It was not my job to fix them all. I wrote an email to the mayor, asking about a plan to fix the roads, specifically the potholes. I was grateful when I received a response, saying that there was a plan to fix the roads in the budget, and that it was a problem that has gone on for far too long. The taxes that we pay go towards this budget, but it was hard to act upon due to COVID-19.

This pothole had a minute impact on my life. However, problems with larger consequences such as property taxes, school funding, and so much more are also dealt with through city government. Local leaders play a key role in making decisions that impact voters and their families.