Will Mayor Quinton Lucas’ proposed pothole czar make KC’s neglected streets any better?

Potholes aren’t a new issue in Kansas City. The rim-bending, tire-destroying craters have wreaked havoc on city roads in recent years, frustrating drivers and doing damage to vehicles as city crews play whack-a-mole with multiplying potholes.

Now, Mayor Quinton Lucas says he wants to take a new approach to an old problem.

Lucas has asked acting City Manager Earnest Rouse to appoint a pothole czar to focus on the most pressing street repairs. The mayor wants the City Council to approve $17 million for street resurfacing, a 70% funding increase from two years ago.

“I have a colleague who once noted potholes are not an act of God,” he said. “She’s right. Instead, they’re often the result of poor choices, poor luck and in too many cases on the city’s part, poor planning.”

From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, the city’s 311 help line received 1,910 calls about potholes. Only 767 of them have been repaired, leaving a bone-jarring 1,143 potholes scattered throughout the city — and that’s just counting the ones that have been reported in recent weeks.

There were 1,463 similar reports during the same period one year ago, according to city officials.

Lucas’ desire to proactively address a citywide problem is commendable.

But hiring a “czar” sounds more like a gimmick than a real solution for smoothing city streets. And the Public Works Department is already tasked with this responsibility.

Lucas said the job would be filled internally and that the pothole czar would help set priorities, coordinate efforts among departments and improve response times. So what, exactly, is the Public Works Department doing?

Some City Council members expressed similar reservations during their first round of budget talks, questioning why a pothole czar is needed when the city has a public works director and suggesting that the money could be better spent hiring workers or buying equipment to patch potholes.

They’re right.

Street repair advocate Frank Sereno, who started a petition asking Lucas, the City Council, Rouse and the Public Works Department to make street repairs a priority, said Lucas’ proposal was a great first step. “But, this is the Show-Me State, not the Tell-Me State.”

Regardless of how the mayor and City Council decide to tackle the pothole problem, that’s only one sliver of Kansas City’s urgent infrastructure needs. The city has a lot more work to do and must fully implement its complete streets infrastructure program to improve safety on Kansas City roads.

“Broken infrastructure is a problem for everyone, no matter how they move around the city,” said Karen Campbell, a spokeswoman for BikeWalkKC, which advocates for a strategic approach that addresses the entire system of neglected infrastructure.

Campbell has urged the city to create a department of transportation that would oversee proposals to make city streets more walkable and bike-friendly and would link public transit with the needs of families, including many who don’t have vehicles.

“As bad as the potholes are right now, many of our city’s sidewalks are in even worse shape, and they are in bad shape all year round,” she said.

Lucas correctly points out that the city has not done enough preventative maintenance to stop problems before they require emergency repairs.

There’s no question that deteriorating roads are a problem in need of urgent attention. But a pothole czar isn’t a panacea.