Hit a pothole? Let Santa Barbara city officials know

The recent rainfall was to blame for some minor flooding and downed trees and it could cause more potholes to pop-up along city streets and roads.

Aside from the wear and tear on your vehicle and the potential for spilled coffee in the morning, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a disdain for potholes. Now, officials in Santa Barbara want to hear from you about the issue.

No one likes to be on pothole patrol.

“I got to check my tires, like dang you got to check your rim or something,” said one Santa Barbara driver.

It’s even a nuisance for those on just two wheels.

“It’s a pest, once in a while it’s jarring,” said cyclist Alan Brown.

With his bicycle in tow, Brown will even change his route if there are too many potholes.

“Yeah potholes can be a bummer, it’s nice that there’s more bike lanes, it’s not so bad in the bike lane,” said Brown.

The City of Santa Barbara is well aware of the pothole plague.

“We get 20 to 30 pothole repair requests per day,” said Jim Dewey, Streets Operations and Infrastructure Manager for the City of Santa Barbara.

If it feels like your commute keeps hitting a rut, the recent rainfall hasn’t helped.

“If a street is in good condition water doesn’t penetrate into the street but when a street is in not so great condition, water penetrates through the cracks in the asphalt and it gets down into the road base and then every time a car runs over that, water pushes some of the road base up into the street and eventually it creates kind of a divot,” said Dewey.

The city is hoping to get ahead of the pothole parade, like the saying goes, if you see something, say something.

“It’s very important that they do report these things because that’s an important part of our process to identify where they’re at it may take some time for us to do the repair but we will repair them,” said Dewey.

As Anacapa Street preps for some fresh pavement, Dewey says thanks to Measure C, more improvements are in the works.

“A lot of that money, the majority of that is going to our streets so what we’re going to see at the end of this year and the coming fiscal year after July 1st, is a lot more work on the streets, a lot more paving efforts,” said Dewey.

You can report a pothole to the City’s Street’s Division by calling 805-564-5454 or by filling out a street repair from here.

Dewey is asking folks to exercise patience because it can take a couple of these repairs.