People in parts of South Allison Hill have begun filling potholes themselves.

They use bricks and dirt, or pieces of asphalt scrounged from other sites - whatever is at hand.

It is a two-fold sign: the basic infrastructure and city responsiveness are both that bad - and the people's resourcefulness here that strong.

At the corner of 16th and Chestnut streets, 9-year-old Janice Baldwin helped fill a particularly deep pothole with up-ended bricks and packed dirt. It's a solid job, such as it is: drivers making the left turn onto Chestnut have a relatively smooth ride and no fear of damaging their vehicle.

That wasn't always the case, said Joni Cvetko, a very proactive local resident who - after calling the city with no result - recruited Baldwin and other local children to help fix the road themselves.

"We didn't want people to crack their tires," said Cvetko.

Several blocks away - on the other side of Hamilton Health Center - Cindy Salmieri says she has been calling the city about the condition of Mayflower Street in front of her home on and off for four years - with no result.

9-year-old Janice Baldwin stands near a pothole she helped to fill at the intersection of 16th and Chestnut streets on South Allison Hill. Repeated calls to the city had produced no results, so residents have begun fixing things themselves the best they can.

As Salmieri spoke, a Fed-Ex truck slowly rocked its way over the cratered pavement. The driver of the truck said the street had been bad for at least seven years.

It would be worse, but a Good Samaritan has mitigated - as Baldwin and Cvetko have done on Chestnut - the worst of the problem. Salmieri said an elderly black man in a small pick-up truck appears and fills in the worst of the holes with old chunks of blacktop he brings with him.

We were unable to track down this one man public works department; no-one seems to know his name.

Even so, residents in the area - many of whom asked not to be named for this story for fear of retribution - tick off a list of repairs that have had to be made to their vehicles and those of friends and family: tire rims, tie rods, ball joints, oil pans. The list goes on, and the combined cost is not cheap.

Cvetko and Salmieri point to other evidence of neglect in the area:

Although the entire length of the Vernon Street playground opens onto Mayflower, there's no sign indicating drivers should look out for children.

Although Chestnut Street is one-way, there are no one-way signs at the intersection with 16th, and drivers unfamiliar with the area make the wrong turn on a regular basis.

Less than one block away, on 16th Street, a sinkhole has opened in the sidewalk that is a child's broken leg waiting to happen - as of Monday it was three feet long, two feet wide, and residents had covered it with plastic milk crates with a large rock on top in hopes no-one might fall in.

No fewer than five residents said they had called the city to no effect. Some said they had left messages but got no return call nor any result. Others said they spoke to a receptionist who was rude and dismissive of their problems.

CITY RESPONDS

Monday afternoon PennLive sat down with Harrisburg Public Works Director Aaron Johnson, his deputy Dave West, City Engineer Wayne Martin and head of the new 311 system Ryan Grigsby.

As soon as Johnson saw a photo of the pothole Baldwin had filled at the corner of 16th and Chestnut, he said: "That there - that's something that we can fix with the equipment that we have now."

He added: "We're going to take care of that tomorrow."

But Mayflower Street in front of Salmieri's house is a different story, he said.

Pot holes crater Mayflower Street near the intersection with 17th Street. Residents and city officials agree: the whole street needs to be replaced. When the city will be able to afford it is another matter.

"The whole street needs to be repaved," said Johnson. The street is so bad, he said, temporary patching just comes back up in a couple of weeks.

Johnson said Mayflower Street is on the city's list of priority projects, but it won't be resurfaced this year. There isn't enough money.

This year, the priority resurfacing project is North 15th Street as it passes along the East side of Harrisburg cemetery, a stretch of roadway so deteriorated it would be more at home in a former Soviet bloc country.

Martin, the new city engineer, explained that the city receives approximately $984,000 in liquid fuels money each year for streets, but about $750,000 - or just over three-quarters of it - goes for electricity for the street lights and traffic signals. Another $85,000 is used for snow removal.

"We're left with a small amount of money," said Martin - less than $150,000 - to address all of the problems on the 90 miles of city-owned roads.

It has been a chronic problem in a city that for years has been on the brink of bankruptcy.

Martin noted that this year there was a separate $450,000 appropriation in the city's general fund budget specifically for streets. Somewhat less than half of that is being used to pay an engineer to design the 15th Street resurfacing project and two other paving projects - the first time that has happened in 14 years.

With an additional $2 million in assistance promised from PennDOT each year for the next several years as part of the Receiver's Harrisburg debt deal last year, Martin said the city is developing a long-term street repairs plan. He hopes to get 15th Street done this year, and perhaps Mayflower and others resurfaced next year.

What about a short term patch in front of Salmieri's home, where the Fed-Ex truck slowly rocks by?

Although Johnson said "There's no way we can just patch it," Salmieri reported that she had watched city crews just last week patching a section of Mayflower less than a block from her home, near an entrance to Hamilton Health Center.

When asked about it, Johnson's deputy, West, confirmed that had happened.

"We poured macadam into the holes to stop what we call 'rim shakers' because the holes are so deep," he said. "We padded them with macadam so they could be kind of a smooth surface for the vehicles to go over until the street would be able to be paved."

As soon as Johnson and West saw a photo of the hole in the sidewalk on 16th Street, both simultaneously said: "That's the homeowner's responsibility." The city, they said, does not own and is not responsible for the sidewalks.

When apprised of the lack of one-way signs along Chestnut Street, Johnson said he would set to work on that immediately, and he said he would also look into signs on Mayflower near the playground alerting drivers to be aware of children playing.

The next day, Cvetko reported that new one-way signs had indeed been installed along Chestnut - the first time there have been such signs in at least two years.

She also said there were indications the city is intending to fill the potholes and pave part of the street.

COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE

Harrisburg Communications Director Joyce Davis said she is "intent" on resolving why residents were not called back or were treated rudely - because "We really want the city to be responsive to the citizens."

But she also acknowledged the problem may be the phone system itself.

The phone lines to Public Works when it was located at the incinerator are still live, according to Johnson, but no one answers or monitors them.

And there are apparently ghost lines at City Hall as well.

Davis said, "We have a lot of lines that are going no-where and that the city's paying for." A company has been hired to analyze the system and sort that out, she said.

"It is possible that people are calling in to lines that are just nobody's monitoring those lines," said Davis. "I mean, that's just a screw-up within a system here."

But Davis said the city has been hard at work improving its responsiveness ever since Eric Papenfuse took office.

Within the first couple of weeks, Davis said, a new computerized tracking system was created for calls coming in to the main help desk, and that system was expanded at the end of May into a 311 system in which citizens can submit complaints to the city digitally. Within the next few months, residents will be able to call a number and have the help ticket automatically created in the computer system.

Ryan Grigsby, who is running the system, said: "In the past 30 days, we've had 57 new tickets; 37 of those have been solved, 67 percent satisfaction rating, and our average response time is 21 hours, so less than a day."

All of that is still digital at the moment, and out of reach for many who live in South Allison Hill.

The fact remains: in order for residents of South Allison Hill to get a response from the city, they had to enlist the help of PennLive.