June 3, 2026
Opinion: Millbrook's Pothole Problem Is More Than an Inconvenience — It's a Choice
Columnist Judith Hale argues that the city's crumbling streets aren't a budget mystery — they're the result of repeated decisions to prioritize other spending over basic infrastructure maintenance.
MILLBROOK, June 3 — I counted seven potholes on my drive to the post office last Tuesday. Seven. On a stretch of Birchwood Avenue that can't be more than six blocks long. One of them — the crater near the intersection with 14th Street — has been there so long that I've started to think of it as a landmark. "Turn left at the pothole," I told my sister when she visited last month. She knew exactly which one I meant. This city has a roads problem, and it has had one for years. What it does not have is a mystery about why.
Follow the Budget, Not the Excuses
Every spring, city officials roll out the same explanation: tight budgets, rising material costs, competing priorities. And every spring, residents nod wearily and file their pothole-report requests through the city's 311 portal, most of which sit unresolved for weeks. But here's the thing — the money exists. The city allocated $1.2 million for infrastructure maintenance in the current fiscal year. That sounds like real money until you learn that independent engineers estimate Millbrook needs closer to $4.7 million annually just to keep the existing road network from deteriorating further. We're not falling behind because of bad luck. We're falling behind because of choices made in budget meetings that most residents never attend.
- Millbrook's road quality rating from the state DOT dropped from a 71 to a 63 out of 100 over the past four years
- The city has received two infrastructure improvement grants in the past three years but used neither for road resurfacing
- A resident petition calling for a dedicated roads levy gathered over 3,200 signatures last fall — and has since sat on the city manager's desk
None of this is meant to be a screed. It's meant to be a wake-up call — for residents and for the elected officials who represent them. The pothole on 14th Street isn't going to fix itself. And neither is the culture inside City Hall that keeps deciding, year after year, that roads can wait. They can't. And frankly, neither can we.
