City fixes sinkhole, but maybe not soon enough: Fixer

It might seem like it takes the city forever to fix things, but it’s a lot better at repairs than the credit it gets.

Many people are passionate about knocking municipal services at every turn. A woman at the Little Paper That Grew has turned it into a full-time job.

She has cultivated a cynical following with a narrative that suggests city employees are lazy bums who show up to work only to snooze — supervised, of course — and go for all-day lunches on the taxpayers’ dime.

Nothing the city does will ever make them happy, and any union stooge or mountebank who suggests otherwise is a liar and a fraud.

But after 11 years of reporting on the small (and sometimes big) problems the city is responsible for, it is our experience that city workers don’t get enough credit for their good work.

In fact, we think it is a daily miracle that the city functions as well as it does, mainly due to the efforts of its front-line employees.

Case in point: A sinkhole at the intersection of Van Stassen Blvd., and Imrac Ct., near Jane and Dundas Sts.

Kevin Birchall sent us a note saying “there is a big hole where a sinkhole repair was started, but never finished.

“There is a steel plate covering half the hole, while the other half has some pylons around it, but the hole is still very open.

“The TTC bus hits the plate every time it goes by, making lots of noise at all hours. The hole has been unfinished for at least a month, and it doesn’t seem to be on any priority list.”

We went there Monday and found the hole had been fixed earlier the same day; fresh concrete poured into an excavation surrounding a utility chamber in the middle of the street was still wet to the touch.

Once the concrete is dry, the hole only needs some asphalt to top it up before the repair is completed.

Some people will no doubt think five weeks to fix it is far too long and amounts to intolerable negligence. But when priorities and resources are taken into account, it seems quite reasonable to us.