Letter: Still no answers on sloppy Tiverton paving jobs

Posted 8/15/19

To the editor:

I recently wrote about the shoddy paving on Ridgeside Lane — driveway cuts not properly compacted that are going to prematurely fail. Tiverton DPW Director Richard Rogers came by …

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Letter: Still no answers on sloppy Tiverton paving jobs

Posted

To the editor:

I recently wrote about the shoddy paving on Ridgeside Lane — driveway cuts not properly compacted that are going to prematurely fail. Tiverton DPW Director Richard Rogers came by and watched me use my fingers to pick stones right out of my patch. He said he would contact the contractor (Cardi Corp.) to find out what happened.

It's now been seven weeks with nary a word from Director Rogers. I've emailed our town council/administrator several times about it. Our town administrator, Jan Reitsma (Director Rogers’ boss) was supposed to call me two weeks ago but hasn't yet. Town Councilor Donna Cook came over to take a look. She watched me pick my patch apart bare-handed.

And the repaving of the road itself doesn't look so hot. About a two foot wide strip running up the middle of the road doesn't look much better than the woefully under-compacted driveway cuts/patches. And other areas look suspect as well. Councilor Cook looked up and down the street, saying - It isn't done yet is it, they're putting on another layer, right? No, I told her, it's "done.”

I'm told Cardi needs to look at it (like they're going to admit to shoddy workmanship!) and that DPW Director Rogers will have the final say on it because his boss, Administrator Reitsma, is not an engineer. Really? If you come home to find your backdoor kicked-in and your belongings all gone, do you need the police to tell you that you've been robbed?

No, because some truths are self-evident. Such as asphalt laid mere months ago being picked apart by hand. Who needs an expert to know that's just plain wrong? As in, it wasn't properly compacted.

And to make matters worse, I came home about five weeks ago to find piles of very rocky dirt dumped on my lawn. I then noticed it was the same up and down the street. Then I saw a ridiculously small smattering of seed applied to these rock/dirt piles. I realized the whole thing was actually intentional and not the landscaping accident it appeared to be!

Small gaps between the lawn and new pavement were "filled in" by our DPW with junk dirt. Instead of screened soil carefully applied in just the gaps (some only inches wide) piles of very rocky soil were just shoveled on, thereby burying plenty of perfectly good grass.

And that rocky dirt was not even packed down. (Like the asphalt on the Ridgeside Lane driveway cuts wasn't packed down!) What good is putting down dirt (or asphalt) if it's not properly packed down? It rained that night and of course it washed all that loose soil away.

Now we have hundreds of pounds of rocks/sand/dirt/ piled all over our road. I emailed Director Rogers July 15 to please have someone clean their mess up and haul those piles away. I haven't heard a thing and nothing has been done. Nobody, especially our bicycle-riding neighborhood children, is happy about this mess. Are we on the road to nowhere?

Ralph G Doliber

Tiverton

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