A Los Angeles homeowner says he regrets asking the city to fix a year-old pothole after workers left his property covered in splattered asphalt.
The resident, who posted about the ordeal on Reddit, said he submitted a request to the county on May 9, begging crews to repair a massive crater that had been collecting rubble for more than a year. He was jolted awake Monday by the sound of an asphalt truck arriving to do the job.
“They’re here for maybe 30 minutes then leave. I get a chance to check out the work eventually and I’m laughing at how bad this is,” he wrote in the Reddit post. “The worst pothole filling I’ve ever seen, after 13 months waiting.”
The man claimed the workers left “asphalt everywhere,” not even trying to fill the potholes but instead “just splashing it around everywhere.” His post quickly gained traction online, drawing hundreds of comments from fellow Angelenos who related to his frustration with the city’s road maintenance.
While county workers performed the actual repair, Mayor Karen Bass bore the brunt of the backlash. Reddit users flooded the thread with criticism directed at the mayor over the shoddy work.
“Karen Bass’s Los Angeles. Third world sh–,” one Redditor wrote.
Another commenter predicted political spin from City Hall. “Karen Bass is gonna make a video patting herself on the back and saying it couldn’t be done properly [because] a car was parked there,” they posted.
A third user offered the homeowner a grim weather warning. “Just wait till it rains, it will be everywhere,” they wrote. “Up here – they do this weird patching and then when it rains it all just flows down the street in large chunks – plus lots of marble size pieces that stick to tires.” They suggested throwing dirt on the ground so the pieces wouldn’t stick to shoes.
The incident comes just one week after Bass was blasted for another pothole-related mishap. In that episode, the mayor promised to fix a pothole but instead filled the street with “no parking” signs to clear space for a future repair crew.
“So we couldn’t repair the pothole,” Bass said in a video posted to social media. “So you know what we did? We put up no parking signs so that hopefully there won’t be anybody parked here tomorrow morning.”
That video infuriated residents already fed up with deteriorating road conditions across the city.
Streets all over Los Angeles have been forced to abandon full paving projects as severe budget constraints push the city toward temporary “spot-treating” and patching individual potholes. The city faces a nearly $1 billion deficit, and the 2025-26 budget originally included more than 1,600 layoffs before labor agreements restored over 1,000 positions. Bass signed the balanced budget in June, which maintains funding for street repair among other services.
The infrastructure crisis extends far beyond one homeowner’s property. A majority of LA’s 22,000 lane miles face structural failure, according to previous reports. The city’s road network, already strained by years of deferred maintenance, has struggled to keep pace with damage from winter storms and daily wear.
Bass has highlighted increased city services during her tenure, with her office noting that 100,000 more services like pothole repair and graffiti removal have been provided. Her administration also points to securing hundreds of millions in state and federal funding. Yet residents continue to document failures that undermine those claims, sharing photos and videos of crumbling streets and botched repairs across social media platforms.
The Reddit homeowner’s experience echoes a broader pattern of frustration. Drivers across the city constantly complain about road conditions, from blown tires to bent rims, with some incidents damaging multiple vehicles in a single night. The phenomenon of temporary patches washing away in rain has become a particular sore point, as residents watch their tax dollars literally flow down the drain in chunks.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the specific repair job. The county public works department has not addressed the homeowner’s allegations about the quality of the work performed on his property.
Bass is scheduled to appear at a community meeting in Sherman Oaks next month to discuss city services and budget priorities.