It was early July.
The potholes still hadn’t been fixed.
So Waldo, Missouri man Frank Sereno took matters into his own hands and came up with an unusual way to bring attention to the potholes on his street.
Three months after looking at one, giant pothole, Sereno had enough.
“The asphalt is completely degraded,” he told KCTV News 5 describing the scene on his street.
Sereno called the city of Waldo enough times to realize it was finally time to try something new.
So he threw a birthday party for a pothole he appropriately named “Pothole.”
“I’m going to have a celebration for Pothole,” he wrote in a post to his Facebook page.
”I got some cake, lit a candle and had a little birthday party for Pothole. He seemed thrilled with the idea,” he wrote to the amusement of his Facebook friends and neighbors.
It was too hot to sing.
“I didn’t sing to him,” he said, referring the pothole.
“It was too hot out.”
A few blocks down the street, workers for the city were filling some of the cracks that formed during winter time.
“I’m extremely excited to see it filled,” Taylor Kruh, a neighbor, said.
“It’s been a fight.”
Kay Gallardo of the local neighborhood also agreed.
“I’m glad to seem them because there’s three on this block that are terrible,” Gallardo explained.
People who live on streets with potholes hope that theirs will be the next one fixed.
Some say their streets have potholes several inches deep.
“Our crews are out on all the districts working through the 311 back log,” Maggie Green, the spokeswoman for public works, told KCTV.
According to Green, rain got in the way of road repairs planned for this spring.
She says crews are pushing to fix the roads and potholes during the recent stretch of sunshine in the city of Waldo.
She says there are still a lot of pothole’s on a list, which city crews still have to work through.
“I think it has to be more of a priority to the city,” Green said.
