City Council Demands Better Streets
After contractors repeatedly ignored demands to fix decaying pavement, Tacoma officials threaten to use bond money to perform the repairs themselves.
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If such a thing is possible, the city council will compel the contractors to immediately repair the bituminous macadam pavement on St. Helens Avenue and on Pacific Avenue between Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth streets. At the meeting last night, the commissioner of public works was instructed to order the contractors to make the repairs within 30 days. If the work is not completed within that time, the city will do the work and charge the expense to the contractors' bondsmen. Several attempts have been made to have the repairs made, but the contractors have so far done nothing. The condition of the streets named has become so bad that the city is forced to take some peremptory action.
“The condition of the streets named has become so bad that the city is forced to take some peremptory action.”
Infrastructure maintenance remains a perennial point of friction between municipal oversight and private contractors. The specific streets mentioned, St. Helens and Pacific, remain major arterial corridors in Tacoma’s downtown district, where street quality continues to influence urban development.
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