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Indianapolis not the only city battling potholes

Neighboring Lawrence has big problem on its hands
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LAWRENCE—Bad roads do not end at the Indianapolis city line.

Neighboring Lawrence is also waging a war on potholes, just not fast enough for resident Douglas Pankop.

"They are destroying our vehicles that we work really hard for. I would like to see accountability for it, where the money is going," he said.

One road that concerns Pankop is 75th Street, where dozens of potholes were recently patched.

RTV 6 took Pankop's concerns to the mayor of Lawrence.

"Well, Lawrence is in a little better shape than Indianapolis," said Steve Collier. "But we still have a lot of work to do. We went through a number of years where we didn't do any paving at all. So, we're catching up the last two or three years."

The city is receiving a matching grant of $1 million dollars—money to be spent on four major road reconstruction projects.

First up will be Sunnyside Road from 56th to 75th Street.

Other projects include 75th Street, Oaklandon Road and Lee Road.

"What we would like to get through is in two or three more years when we get all of our major thoroughfares taken care of is to be able to get back into some of the housing additions. We pretty much had to ignore those because there's isn't enough traffic to justify it there," said Collier.

In response to Pankop's concern about how tax dollars are spent, Collier said road work in Lawrence is a priority.