New York City Tax Dollars At Work

Even though New York City is facing a massive deficit and the proposed budget includes thousands of teacher layoffs and other measures to close the budget, idiocy still abounds throughout the City's vast bureaucracy.

On Staten Island, that translated into the Department of Transportation painting reflective line markers on a pothole and rutted stretch of highway that was slated to get milled and paved... starting next week.

Fresh off the pointless labor of putting lines on a Dongan Hills street, the city Department of Transportation was painting the town again yesterday, this time laying reflective white stripes down the center of the West Shore Expressway.

Only problem is, the new paint was dropped right down the pothole-riddled center of the crumbling highway, which is itself slated for milling and repaving starting Monday night.

Many of the new hashmarks were actually painted inside the potholes, which had the comical effect of accentuating their depth and craggy edges.

The state DOT, which runs the road, entrusts the city with its maintenance.

The two agencies typically coordinate their projects, to make sure both are on the same page, said state DOT spokesman Adam Levine.

The impending milling and repaving of the northbound right lane of the West Shore has been in the works for awhile, and an article about the project has appeared in the Advance. It was expected to be completed in late April.

But the work was delayed a few weeks when the contractor, InterCounty Paving Associates, was backlogged with other projects after the hard winter, and the city may not have been aware that the paving was since expedited to start on Monday.

How much money and time was wasted on that nonsense? New York City taxpayers have a right to know what this nonsense cost them, and why no one is going to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Did no one on that paint crew notice that they were simply painting into the potholes? They didn't question why they were not first fixing the potholes before painting?

I suspect that they were merely going through the motions to collect a paycheck, and didn't want to expend the effort to find out that their services should be directed elsewhere.