OMAHA — After living more than 40 years along a road plagued by potholes, Jo Anne Amoura was excited to see city crews shred her block of Leavenworth Street into gravel.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great. We’re going to get a new street,’” Ms. Amoura recalled. “And then we waited and waited and waited.”

Fresh pavement never arrived. Only after the asphalt had been ripped out almost three years ago did Ms. Amoura and her neighbors learn that their street had been “reclaimed,” Omaha City Hall’s euphemism for unpaving a road.

“It’s really kind of like living in the country in the city,” said Ms. Amoura, 74. Her neighbors sometimes hauled wheelbarrows full of scattered gravel back up the hill after big rainstorms. And her house, she says, is regularly smudged with dirt blowing in from the street.