Dear

I want to thank you and your hardworking repair crews for helping get us through this year’s horrific winter road conditions and for addressing repairs to the damaged streets in a timely manner.  I realize that the recurring pothole problem causes great difficulty, not only for motorists, but for city officials who have to work within limited budgets to pay for the manpower, materials and equipment needed to make expensive ongoing annual repairs. 

It has been well publicized that repairing streets and fixing potholes costs the taxpayers and the city a lot of money every year.  With an eye toward eliminating these expenses, I would like to request that we consider investing some of our street funds (as well as seeking additional new funding) for a long term solution—a continuous road improvement program that will put an end to the pothole problem once and for all.

I would like to ask the city to look at paving with concrete as a long-term solution that will provide a proven, long lasting driving surface that is well documented to be a much stronger, extremely damage-resistant road surface.  If we begin now to invest in concrete streets, we can eliminate the annual infestation of potholes along with the annual maintenance dollars required to repair them.

Concrete has been widely used in cities with comparable climates to the Denver metro area, and a check with the officials of these municipalities would show little or no expenditures for maintenance of those streets.  Investigation of concrete streets in the Denver area such as Martin Luther King Boulevard, University Boulevard and C-470, will indicate a minimum annual maintenance cost and little or no winter/spring damage.  Concrete streets generally last for decades without damage; in fact concrete actually gets harder over time.

Current oil prices have made concrete an economically viable alternative to other road paving materials.  Rather than throw money at temporary fixes year after year for a problem that will only return the next winter, I hope you will seriously consider upgrading to concrete street construction.

The onslaught of severe snow storms that Colorado residents endured this winter have showed us how important a functioning road system is to our commerce. The traveling public is affected by the condition of our roads. They face delays, car damage (car alignment, flat tires, and bent axles) that take money out of the wallets of motorists and deplete city budgets for road repairs that could be avoided if we begin to pave our streets and roads with concrete.

I believe your research will confirm that concrete pavement is the best solution to help put an end to our recurring annual pothole problem.  Again, thank you for your diligence in getting us through very tough winter driving conditions.

Sincerely,