Residents who say they are tired of waiting for the city to repair public roads have started filling potholes on their own after learning how to do it on YouTube.

It all started when one citizen, who lives on 28th Street, got fed up with reporting the potholes pitting the streets near his house. He called City Hall for months and never saw any action, he said.

City officials, meanwhile, said they are developing a street maintenance plan and doing the best they can to stay on top of potholes.

Does the story above sound familiar? No, it’s not from Port Arthur. It’s from Dickinson, Texas, a small town between Houston and Galveston, where citizens grew so tired of waiting for their streets to be fixed, they took action themselves.

Zach Weeks of Dickinson stated, “We just did it with three people — me, my neighbor and my wife. We got online and learned how to do the steps right. I was surprised how fast it went.”

The volunteer road crew of three spent about $150 on asphalt and patched three potholes earlier this week, Weeks said. But that was just the beginning.

Now more than 10 people have signed up to go out with the group in the coming weeks and tackle other crumbling streets.

An asphalt distributor contacted Weeks and offered to sell him supplies at wholesale prices and the group has a plan for where it’s going next.

It sounds like the streets in Dickinson are not much better than those here in Port Arthur. And their city officials are creating a street maintenance plan, just like city officials here in Port Arthur.

The frustrating part for citizens is how long it takes to get something done. It’s not like these roads just all of a sudden started getting potholes.

It’s great that citizens of Dickinson decided to take matters into their own hands. The sad thing is that they felt there was no other choice if things were going to get better.

In Dickinson, as in Port Arthur, drainage has also been a hot topic since Hurricane Harvey flooded the city. Officials warned citizens then the flooding would cause problems later.

The phenomenon of citizens taking on city maintenance work is a product of the city focusing on large, pie-in-the-sky projects and forsaking routine maintenance work, Weeks said.

“This isn’t a new problem,” he said. “A lot of us have been trying for a long time to get the city to look at basic maintenance. Elected officials have these large dreams but they don’t match the reality of what the city wants.”

Streets throughout Port Arthur need to be completely re-done. That, City Council members have been told, would cost some $400 million. Drainage issues need to be a continual focus.

Every election, candidates run on a platform of fixing streets. Yet, year after year we see the same issues that don’t seem to change. Maintenance plans are discussed. Roads are started — some finished, some not. Then it stops all together.

Has anyone driven down West Seventh Street in Port Arthur lately? This road was paved just a couple of months ago. Two months later, a quarter-mile stretch of the new pavement is separating from the foundation where it was placed, almost as if it were simply sliding off.

It’s uncanny how similar the situation in Port Arthur is to Dickinson. I hate to say it, but if citizens want something done, they may have follow suit and create “The Port Arthur Pothole Posse.”

Portions of this column were taken from a story written by Aaron West, reporter for the Galveston Daily News. We thank them for permission to incorporate that information in this column.