- Salt Lake City relaunches "Pothole Palooza" to address road complaints.
- City leaders urge residents to report potholes online.
- Last year's event filled nearly 6,000 potholes; this year aims for similar success.
SALT LAKE CITY — Jorge Chamorro doesn't have an exact number for how many complaints he's received about potholes, but he knows it's a large portion of the road concerns Salt Lake City receives either through emails, calls or its mobile app.
"There is no day that goes by without reports of potholes," says Chamorro, director of Salt Lake City's Department of Public Service.
And while this winter offered some of the best road surface conditions that his team could hope for, the more than 1,900 lane miles of roads that Utah's capital city manages always suffer from wear and tear through age and regular traffic from residents, workers and visitors alike.
That's why Salt Lake City is bringing back "Pothole Palooza," a week dedicated to fixing the common complaint.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Salt Lake City Councilwoman Sarah Young kicked off the event this year by helping city road maintenance employees clamp down an asphalt mix along Glen Arbor Street, a cul-de-sac in Sugar House, Friday.
Beginning Monday, street repair teams will drop everything and focus entirely on fixing potholes for the rest of the workweek. Anyone can submit trouble spots online or through the city's mySLC app, and crews will respond to that location, Mendenhall said. Crews will also be out driving around the city and looking for potholes to repair.
"We are going full bore to fill as many potholes as we possibly can (through April 10)," she said.
The annual event focuses only on roads that the city manages, which can be confusing since the Utah Department of Transportation also manages some of the city's roads. City officials say they will respond to residents' and visitors' pothole complaints on UDOT roads by directing them to the state agency's reporting system.
Last year's event resulted in nearly 6,000 filled potholes, some of which came after 61 resident requests. It accounted for a decent portion of the more than 39,200 potholes that were filled throughout the 2025 fiscal year.
Brian Carlson, KSLSalt Lake City also debuted a new truck last year that holds all the repair equipment in one vehicle to help crews move to each site faster, as part of other recent investments in fixing potholes. These allow city crews to "chew up" crumbled asphalt and mix it into new materials that help recycle it back into the road, the mayor explained.
It's unclear how many potholes will be filled this year. This winter, which almost certainly set a record for the lowest snowfall in more than 150 years in the city's history, created fewer freeze-thaw cycles that typically lead to roadway damage. However, there are always holdovers from previous winters when managing such a vast road system, Chamorro said.
City leaders hope residents will give them an assist next week by alerting them to road issues.
"Our city is stronger when we all contribute to the solution," Young said.
