This has been bothering me.

Several years ago, an acquaintance of mine told me about how they handle one aspect of street maintenance in London. It made so much sense. Why don't we do that here in my hometown? Here's the deal: In London, when a street has to be dug up by a utility, construction company, or whatever, the city doesn't allow the contractor to put some lousy, third-rate, asphalt patch on the hole. Instead, the contractor fills up the hole and the city comes in to patch the pavement properly--to a high standard.

See, here in my city, the contractors finish the paving patches themselves. I assume they hire the paving contractor with the lowest bid. The patches are unbelievably bad, leaving some streets looking like four-wheel-drive roads. By the time one winter and its freeze/thaw cycles has passed, the road is a disaster. And the life of the pavement is drastically shortened, requiring repaving sooner than if the patches were high-quality. Why do we let them get away with it? Contractors should be required to simply pay the city a standard rate and let the city fix our streets. These guys have proven once and for all that they can't take care of the roads owned by the city and its people--no more!

And one more thing while I'm on the subject: The city had a contractor "chip-seal" my street. You probably know that this is the process of laying down tar on a street (the sealant), then laying gravel (the chips) on top and letting routine traffic push the gravel into the tar, making the street watertight. I have no problem with chip-sealing--really. Here's my beef: this block had potholes! They didn't even bother to patch these before the chip-seal! That means that this winter, the snowmelt will collect in them, freeze and thaw over and over, blowing up the underlying pavement in no time, leaving a huge pothole where a small one is now... Gee whiz!

CDs listened to today:

• Johan de Meij: T-bone Concerto
• The White Stripes: Elephant
• Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain
• Irwin Bazelon: Brass Quintet
• Alice In Chains: (eponymous)
• Esa-Pekka Salonen: L.A. Variations
• Hebert Vazquez: String Quartet No. 1