By Gary Buiso
It will be a smoother ride for residents of a Bergen Beach block whose street and sidewalk woes were chronicled in this newspaper last week. After a call from the Kings Courier on Jan. 18, crews from the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) were hard at work on East 74th Street between Avenues X and Y on Jan. 22, filling potholes that have plagued the beleaguered block. “Several potholes were filled,” confirmed DOT spokesperson Craig Chin. “We will regularly monitor the area,” he added. Chin vowed that any complaint to 311 would be quickly addressed by his agency. Block resident Sal Calise was reserved in his assessment of the work. “It’s better than nothing,” he said. “For now, they are doing enough.” The work, he said, is merely patchwork—like fixing a busted pipe with a wad of chewing gum. “The next rain or snow we get, it’s all going to rip right open again,” he said of the street. Potholes are far from the only problem on the block. Residents have been waiting for East 74th Street’s uneven street and sidewalk to be fixed for years. The block’s problems were supposed to be fixed this year by a joint project by the DOT and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, but the project was recently postponed until 2011. Back in 2004, the Department of Design and Construction, which is overseeing the work, said that East 74th Street and roughly 16 other blocks were removed from the project because of title issues that require the city to acquire private property, as well as drainage issues that needed to be addressed, according to an agency letter. Since then, it’s been a frustrating wait for residents. “The street actually needs to be fixed. It gets worse and worse,” Calise said.
