All summer there’s been construction work along Falls Road. Early on in the project, I thought about how much they were ripping up the street and hoping that we’d finally get something better than a thousand bits of patchwork and properly repave the street. To my surprise, a few weeks back, they cut the telltale grooves into the street that indicated we were going to get fresh, curb to curb, asphalt.

Imagine my delight when we had new street after extensive construction.

This has only been met by sheer rage, as just a few weeks later, a new crew shows up and cuts a huge trench right down the center of the road. They have been laying down metal plates since, and I’m sure when they’re done they’ll fill it like a pot hole.

This entire road was torn all the way down for work, and no one could coordinate with the next guys? They just show up a few weeks later and fuck it up?

This kind of every day incompetence in planning and coordination by local governments drives me insane. It’s the kind of low quality services that are unacceptable at $22.48 per $1000 property tax rates.

We need people who care enough about government services to do them better.

A crew of six men (one partially hidden by another) in bright yellow vests standing in the center of the road. There’s a white truck and a digger. One man is waste deep in a trench I the center of the road while another kneels beside him. There are orange cones around the workers, and a clean, clearly freshly poured street in the right lane in the foreground. A brick library with white, Greek revival columns is in the background. 3600 block of Falls Road in Baltimore looking south from 37th Street.