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Letter to the editor

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Concerns about streets

Editor:

Two years ago I began voicing my concern to city officials and council regarding the haphazard application by Fairborn street crews of a product called “crack seal.” You don’t have to drive far in Fairborn to newly paved streets where aesthetic and practical value of same has been utterly destroyed. City officials boast money savings through the use of this product with no regard to the ugly nature of this application.

Drive the recently repaved streets of Juniper, Mapleview, Mapleridge, Poplar, Dayton Yellow Springs and Main. These are exemplary of scores of streets that have been botched by Fairborn street crew with drips, squiggles and splats of the crack seal product with very little even applied to a crack. I have been promised time and time again more conservative application, smaller applicator to be used and for the cracks to actually be hit during the application. The latest application of crack seal product by Fairborn street crew ran east to west on Garland from Kapok to Kauffman. This was applied only within the last two weeks. Barely any cracks have been sealed and the aesthetic value of Garland has been ruined by the sloppy application.

Citizens, Fairborn city officials have promised to continue this crack seal program in 2016 with a good number of streets scheduled to be hit including Bowman, Fryer, Carpenter, Glendale, Rona Parkway, Cottage Court and many more. Money savings is still the claim to continue. Ask yourselves how making a town that is struggling to bring business and people to town can afford to make our newly paved roads ugly? Also, how is cutting paychecks to city street workers who made these messes a cost savings? If I did my job in the manner Fairborn street crew applied crack seal to streets, I would have no groceries in my house. There is so much more to consider than saving some pocket change in the hear and now. These sloppy applications will be here for decades.

Fairborn citizens, raise your voices to city council and officials and demand this crack seal application stop.

— Donna Johnson, Fairborn