Mayor Zohran Mamdani will mark his 100th day in office later this week, but on Monday, it was another big number getting attention… 100,000.
It represents the amount of potholes the administration, along with the Department of Transportation, has filled after a punishing stretch of winter storms.
Mayor Mamdani helped crews fill that milestone pothole in Eltingville, Staten Island.
“The roads are pretty horrible around here,” said Eltingville resident Rob Coco.
Coco says in some places, the roads are an obstacle course of tire-busting craters that are almost unavoidable.
“You got to basically drive around the potholes,” he said. “There’s many roads that I know by heart that I just know where the potholes are. And I basically have to kind of put my car right over it in the middle.”
The historic snowstorms and the brutal cold that followed left behind ripped-up roads and an historic plague of potholes.
City work crews have filled tens of thousands in recent weeks, and on Monday, on Staten Island, Mayor Mamdani filled the ceremonial 100,000th to make a point.
“This is pothole politics, right? We know that New Yorkers are measuring the impact of city government in these ways, and they’re saying that if you want me to believe in the promise of universal child care, you have to show that you can deal with the smallest kind of issues that have often been overlooked,” Mamdani said.
The mayor admits there may be thousands more potholes out there. At least that, says Mike Skretovic, who owns Major Auto Group on Hylan Boulevard.
“They are getting better. Just, you know, a lot of streets still, you know, there are potholes. You can’t go left, right, whatever,” Skretovic said. “Everybody’s angry. Like, you have people they get in a month, like three flats or four flats. They’re like, ‘this is crazy!’ You know? And another thing is a lot of blowouts to not only flats, you know, you hit a pothole, you blew the tires, blew the rim. So a lot of people, you know, they have to put $500, $600 for repairs.”
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