Judged By The Streets You Keep...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

HARLINGEN, Texas | What potholes? Where? How many? Don't see them, son. We must be in the New Harlingen, the one Mayor Norma Sepulveda insists will keep getting better and better. Listening Brownsville?

This from the first-term mayor about her attention to Harlingen byways:. . . [ Harlingen continues to pave the way for smoother commutes with the completion of street paving on Tucker Road and Lincoln Avenue, Louisiana Street and Morris Road, 21st Street and Vinson Avenue, and 20 1/2 Street and 21st Street. 

Be sure to follow us for more updates on upcoming projects as we continue to improve our community. ]

"Nice work," commented one resident on the mayor's Facebook page. "That's my street."

Yeah, a little bit of progress never hurt any of the Rio Grande Valley's always-lacking-something cities and towns. Mostly, rolling Valleyites drive the busy expressway, and that one is sort of kept in shape by the State of Texas.

Your local streets and county roads are something else. You've heard the complaints of knee-deep potholes in Brownsville. Along some of its busiest boulevards, too. A little rain? Whoops, here comes another pothole and there goes the tire alignment in my old Buick.

It's the age-old, never-ending problem.

McAllen does a good job. If it has any amount of potholes, it's likely in its smaller, older neighborhoods, not along any of the city's busiest streets and avenues. Harlingen's latest effort is laudable. And its improvements, as they say in beauty pageants, are showing.

Perhaps all it takes is a mayor who says, "Let's do it," and it gets done.

The complaining will continue. Streets get used and streets erode, little by little, day by day. But complain you must.

Something tells me someone complained once too often in Harlingen, and someone in some authority got tired of getting the phone calls.

Funny how that goes, eh?...

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