‘Quincy has more potholes than people’: Moore not backing down from 100-day promise as mayoral term starts Monday

QUINCY — Linda Moore’s campaign was filled with many promises, but one of them likely will define her early success when she begins her four-year term as mayor on Monday.

As she shared her “Fix and Grow” plan during a press conference on Feb. 27 at the Western Catholic Union Hall, she promised to fix all potholes on city-managed streets within the first 100 days of taking office.

“That doesn’t mean the roads are going to be repaired in that 100 days. It means the potholes are going to be fixed so that you won’t lose a child in them,” Moore said at the press conference.

Moore didn’t back down from her promise during a conversation with Muddy River News on Thursday.

“I will make sure that we make every effort to fill every pothole we can,” she said. “I’m a firm believer that if you don’t challenge people to rise to the level you want, they never will.”

How many potholes does Quincy have? 

“I would guess 50,000,” Moore said. “I would say Quincy has more potholes than people.”

She said several people have come forward — inside and outside city government — to offer their help. She also said she has spoken with two former directors of the city’s Central Services department who believe all the potholes can be filled by Sept. 24 — the deadline for her 100-day directive.

(Moore is counting 100 days of work, not 100 calendar days. Her promise, her rules.)

However, she says others doubt the work can be done.

“My brother, who was here a couple weeks ago from Alabama, said, ‘It’ll never happen. You have more potholes than you know,’” Moore said with a smile. “There’s more and more created every day because we’re not sealing the cracks, so then they become potholes. We haven’t been sealing the cracks for a number of years.”

Moore said city employees will use a “grid system” and work in each of the city’s wards for at least a week.

“They’ll go down one street, fill all the potholes they see, then come back the next street and fill all the potholes they see,” she said. “We’re doing that rather than using the work order system where somebody calls in a pothole on Second and Locust, and then the next person calls in a pothole at 18th and Harrison, and the next person calls in one at 24th and Sycamore, and the trucks are going here and here and here. They’re spending more money in gas than on the materials to fill the pockets.”

She said the city has plenty of material, and potholes will be filled in a variety of ways.

“Some will use hot patch, some will be cold patch,” Moore said. “For some, we will use this big, hefty machine that takes 50 minutes just to do one pothole. There are some places where we simply square it out, blow it out, put some sealer in it and put the stuff in. Those may not last five years or four years or three years or two years or one year, but I’d rather have a little bit of a speed bump than a crater.

“It’s a band aid, but a band aid will stop the bleeding. This is triage. That’s really all it is.”

Moore wants to see more time spent maintaining the city’s major roads.

“We have to look at optics to an extent,” she said. “People want to see the major roads done now. A good portion of 18th Street has been done, but 12th from Maine south is in bad shape, and 12th Street north is horrendous. It needs to be rebuilt. Right now, we’re doing Broadway, so 12^th Street isn’t going to get done this year. I hope it’s going to be on the radar in the very near future.”

Moore wants more companies and contractors to be available to do street projects.

“We have the money. It’s been set aside to do certain projects, but we don’t have enough contractors,” she said. “The same contractor does all the roads. They move a crew from one place to another to another, just to try to keep projects moving forward, but we need another whole crew. Then we could do the roads at the time we say we’re going to do them, instead of having to wait two or three years. Then the price goes up, and then we run short of money.”