We Tested Lawton’s 72 Hour Pothole Promise
It was only in April of this year that I first shared with you a promise your City of Lawton Street Division made to our community. When you reported a pothole or road issue with their new website interface program, they vowed to have it fixed within 72 hours.
While many people rolled their eyes at the notion, having been the official cold-patch asphalt repair guy for my parent's driveway, I knew it was totally doable... even more so when you have the right tools for the job, which in the city's case is a shovel and some asphalt.
If you've ever seen our road crews out and about doing pothole repair, it's fairly simple and quick. They typically just toss asphalt in the hole and let traffic firm it up as they drive over it. It's not how I do it, but I'm also not using hot asphalt down the long driveway. They made it such a streamlined process, 72 hours seemed more than enough in my own mind.
Boy was I wrong.
As it turns out, you were totally justified in rolling your eyes when hearing Lawton's 72-hour pothole promise. Let me break down our findings.
This process of reporting a pothole starts on the City of Lawton Streets & Traffic Control webpage. At the bottom there's a link for the iHelp Lawton pothole portal.
When you click that, it redirects you to the third-party website that allows you to report your street issue.
I proceeded as a guest since signing up for stuff usually means someone is selling more of your personal data... Trust no one.
This is the landing page inside the program. It's a map of Lawton where you can literally pinpoint your potholes and other road issues. While it may seem involved, this takes the guesswork out of trying to get your stuff fixed.
Since I figured we were testing out the 72-hour system for science, and because we had nothing better to do that particular day, I reported two different potholes a few miles from each other. One up on Cache Road and the other near City Hall on Gore Boulevard.
This was on Wednesday, June 22nd at 9:19 AM.
For days I drove that same route to work with the excited expectation that the city was carrying through on the smallest of promises, but alas, weeks have gone by with no resolve... sort of...
The pothole we reported up on Cache Road just West of Homestead did get filled nine full days after reporting the issue through the Lawton iHelp Portal. Granted, two of those days accounted for a weekend, so they actually count.
The other pothole we reported was on Gore Boulevard just East of 11th Street. Odds are you know which one I'm talking about, right in front of the Axe Throwing place. It's been there for years. Here we are still waiting on it to be fixed fourteen days later. I'm at the point I'm taking my regular route to work so I won't know if or when it does get a shovel of asphalt to correct the issue.
While the 72-hour pothole fix promise had all of the potential to brighten up one of Lawton's darkest topics, it's more of the same when it comes to the city neglecting our roads.