Pot Holes in a Tourist Town is Really Unacceptable

While a solution to our pot hole problem may have escaped the consciousness of most people, it has not escaped the consciousness of the author of this publication.

We the community of Big Bear Lake and Big Bear City collect more in tourism dollars than pretty much most communities in America. With this as a fact the question of why the residents and voters of our great cities are having to put up with the the pot holes for as long as we have had to. All of the accelerated road eroded pot holes we are subjected to day after day and year after year when our tourist community is raking it in while ignoring the citizens complaints has reached a climax of late and deservedly so.

While it has may have escaped the attention of our city leaders, it has not escaped the attention of the author of this story.

We as a tourist community make a lot of money from tourism. From the Hospitality Tax (Hotel Tax) alone which is higher than the average, and with the intent to raise it even higher, the Big Bear Valley takes in a lot of revenues that should and must be used to repair this tourist induced damage to our roads. If we ever wanted to we could get these pot holes repaired in a day or two if we chose to. From what this author has learned the red tape our city leaders are hiding behind is that as a state highway only Caltrans has the authority to perform these tasks. While this is true the conversation does not end there and Citizen Vatch for one is ready to tackle this problem as this is getting ridiculous. Since our individual complaints to Government has not produced results it’s time we take matters into our own hands and in a unified voice to make our displeasure and our demands heard and heard clearly. Citizen Vatch has started this petition so that we as a community can have our community run as we see fit. Although we can understand and do support getting our roads repaired for free, if we have to wait on Caltrans and their untold timetable, well we know the result that gets us, no action for a very very long time. While the Caltrans timetable may be normal and understandable for most situations, the Big Bear Valley is not a normal situation, we have a freeze thaw cycle which causes an accelerated deterioration to our roads.

Since there is no argument that 80-90% of the traffic and trucking that is eroding our roads happens due to tourism it is high time that our city leaders of both Big Bear Lake and Big Bear City put some of our tourist collected revenues back into the community in repairing the damage done by tourism. In this case our roads.

Citizen Vatch proposes that both city leaders lead and approach Caltrans into an agreement to where we as a city can hire Caltrans approved contractors to repair the pot holes ourselves. We have the tourism dollars for theses repairs therefore this is a no brainer. Repairs can be made immediately and by Caltrans approved contractors, we do not need to beg and wait for the State to look into our situation each and every time. We the people have had to put up with this inconvenience and damage to our vehicles long enough plus its looks really bad to the tourist does it not? A tax rich city as Big Bear Lake that is potted for months and years on end is a bad image for tourists and locals alike and it has now reached the level of completely unacceptable by the community and your voice here and now on this topic is the only way we will get this done. If our leaders don’t lead we need to voice the fact that they need to move over and let intelligent people who can come up with solutions as simple as this to get things done. This author is not running for office but if he were this is the mentality and approach as an engineer I am putting forward today to solve our long overlooked problem. Big Bear Lake and Big Bear City “Get this done now, we have had to put up with this long enough.”

Sign the petition to fix our roads now.