City of Piedmont cancels citizen pothole filling event following public outcry

PIEDMONT- (KOKH) — The city of Piedmont received severe backlash for giving citizens the opportunity to fill street potholes themselves.

Piedmont’s City Manager told FOX 25 the city was looking to hold an event Saturday where people could learn to fill in potholes. But after a very harsh response on social media, the event never got off the ground.

"The intent was not to be a slap in the face to the taxpayers, to the citizens, it really was supposed to be a community-driven event," said City ManagerJosh Williams.

However, that's how several Piedmont residents on Facebook took the announcement; some questioning why they're still paying taxes, and others voicing safety concerns of the now canceled event.

Williams said when he started working for the city two years ago, citizens told him there was once a volunteer group called the "Pothole Posse."

"So I said well, this was something from the past, we've got residents coming up and saying 'Hey, let's do this today.' The staff kicked it around, and we decided that that was something that we wanted to champion," he said.

But Williams said he and the city were not prepared for the largely negative response they received, and due to the amount of negative responses, decided to cancel the event altogether. He added that the volunteer pothole repair was only scheduled to be a biannual event.

In light of some of the tax questions raised on Facebook, we asked Williams if there are budget constraints when it comes to repairing Piedmont's roads. Here's what he had to say:

"There's just a lot that goes into the operations of a municipality. And I know the roads are the hot topic, but in order to make it all work, we have to use every penny that we get and plus, look for other grant opportunities or partnership opportunities to make it all work," he said.

Williams said Piedmont City Hall is the people’s hall, and that they did not mean to offend any of their residents.