Be careful out there — it’s pothole season in Sault Ste. Marie.
Which means it’s also that time of year when Mayor Matthew Shoemaker fields plenty of pointed questions about the city’s efforts (or lack thereof) to fix all those potholes.
We asked the mayor the same question when he stopped by our SooToday studio earlier this month for a sit-down interview.
“Potholes are the bane of the whole municipal organization's existence,” he said. “We hate them. Our residents hate them.”
Shoemaker blames part of the Sault's pothole problem on what he calls a lack of “proper investment” in roads dating back three decades ago. He also notes that hot asphalt isn’t readily available in early spring, which makes it difficult to properly fill potholes immediately after the snow starts to melt.
“There's also the fact that we live in a northern climate and frost and heaving and all that,” he said. “So you're never going to get rid of every pothole. That's an impossible dream to chase and it's a bottomless pit that you would be putting money into.”
“There's always going to be a pothole to chase, right?” he continued. “So if you focus all your efforts and energies on potholes, you won't get to anything else. Potholes are important. We need to fill them. We do fill them. We spend a lot of money on filling them. But it's a better use of resources to make sure that your infrastructure budget is where it should be so that you have better roads overall, and then fewer potholes down the road.”
Do you want to tell City Hall about a particularly nasty pothole? Or file a claim for damage done to your vehicle? You can find more information HERE.
Click HERE to watch the mayor’s full interview.
