Kansas City motorists have complained for years about roads left rough after utility companies did only minimal restoration to streets they had cut open.
Most annoying of all were the scars left in freshly paved streets, when with better coordination that utility work could have been done before the new street was put in.
So in 2021, the Kansas City Council set stricter standards on street cuts from companies like Spire or Evergy.
Utility companies that need to open up streets to work on lines beneath the pavement are required to get an excavation permit and then restore the street to meet city standards after the work is done.
But a new audit shows that some utilities are not following those new rules, and city inspectors are letting them get away with it because of what Public Works Director Michael Shaw called “process-related issues” in testimony at a council committee meeting on Wednesday.
“It is going to require us to get new software or software that actually helps us do what we need it to do, versus having software that we’re trying to change our process to fit the software,” he said.