Recently workers from the Cortez Public Works Department came to my house at the intersection of Aldridge and Cochita in the Paradise Village subdivision to repair the roadway. I noticed them out there and went out to ask them to look at the problem created by the fact that after the water and sewer contractors had removed the dirt to put in new lines, they had changed the level of the street to be higher than the sidewalk. This caused a situation were the melting ice and snow was now draining into onto the sidewalk. I asked them if they could create a gutter beside the sidewalk so the road and the sidewalk could properly drain. I was very pleasantly surprised when they immediately took their backhoe over to the sidewalk curb and, with hand shovels and the backhoe, began digging out the gutter and restoring the proper drainage. Now mind you, they originally showed up to just fill in a deep depression in the middle of the roadway that was left there as a large mud puddle once the thaw had begun, but they didn’t hesitate to do the additional job of creating a good drainage. They did an excellent job of repairing the street.

I have only lived in Cortez for about 17 months, I moved here from Colorado Springs; I know in that city you cannot go and ask a street repair crew to alter their job plan to accommodate a local issue not in their original work order. You certainly would not expect them to jump on the request immediately and resolve the issue right then and there. No, they would have to get a lot of paperwork done and permission to do the work if it ever got addressed at all. This Cortez crew had a friendly, can-do attitude that was really refreshing to someone who is use to bureaucratic run-around. I just wanted to say thank you to them and to the city of Cortez for addressing our water and sewer issues here with a solid plan and a permanent fix.

Terrence Whelan

Cortez