I questioned the crew when they were having trouble making the turn at the top of the hill, in the narrow cul-de-sac. I asked if there was an emergency, since 1. it was Sunday & 2. there had been a lot of Dept Sanitation crews on our street recently. A man identifying himself as the night & weekend crew supervisor politely responded, it was just "routine maintenance" since our street was recently repaved (in March). He did not know what the other crews who work week-day hours were doing here. There was no emergency.
To the crew's credit they were polite & worked quickly. But, Sunday morning is not when most people expect to hear jackhammers on the street.
Digging out the manhole covers to the sewer is important, but it would seem a waste of City resources (taxpayer dollars) to assign a crew to a residential Hillside neighborhood on a Sunday morning when it was not an emergency. Shouldn't they be working Downtown or in an industrial area on nights & weekends?
Of course, this wouldn't be necessary if they just paved around the manholes. It is possible. I witnessed it in another city earlier this year.
There was no notice, so neighbors had no opportunity to move their cars. They were jachammering near cars. Rubble was not swept from the street. They had to stop work several times to let cars pass. You have to wonder how many more cars they damage on weekends than on weekdays when there are fewer cars parked on the street. They didn't even get to all the covers because cars were parked too close.
Clearly there is no oversight at the Dept of Sanitation.
We sent an email of the incident to City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell & City Controller Ron Galperin with these photos, copied to the entire Corralitas Neighborhood Watch list.
