SPOKANE, Wash. – A little more than a month ago, Mari Pritzl, filled out paperwork to file a pothole claim at Spokane City Hall on a KREM 2 Verify Road Trip. Just this week, she received a denial letter from the city. But why won’t the city pay for her damages?
Pritzl first contacted KREM 2 when a pothole at 37th and Freya caused a significant amount of damage to her car.
“It was like a land mine, like I didn’t even expect it. My car hit so hard it bottomed out,” Pritzl said.
Then on February 21st, Pritzl sat down with the city and filed a claim. During that visit, Pritzl was skeptical about whether the city would pay it forward.
Back in February while filing a claim with the city, Pritzl said, “So are they going to say it was an act of God because of the weather, then deny the claim?”
But Brian Coddington, Spokane’s Public Information Officer, responded, “No, not necessarily, part of the criteria is whether or not it’s been previously reported and there was enough time for the city to go our and repair that pothole.”
Fast forward to this week; Mari received a letter from Alternative Service Concepts, a liability claims administrator for the city of Spokane that said her claim was denied.
“For them to deny me saying, you called on the 10th and it was repaired on the 11th is just a blatant lie and it makes me furious,” Pritzl said.
The letter reads, “We obtained the report and repair log from the Street Department. The maintenance log shows this pothole was reported on 2/10/2017 which is the date of your incident. It was repaired the next day.”
However, Pritzl said she saw someone else hit the pothole on the 16th and in a video KREM 2 shot on the 14th, but that does not mean the city did not go out and fix it like they said. The pothole could have reopened by the time KREM 2 saw it on the 14th.
“I could’ve accepted this if they said, 'Hey, you know, it’s just nature, we couldn’t, you know, nobody else had complained about it prior to you, so there was nothing we could do,' but to just make up a blatant lie to say they fixed it the very next day, it makes me very angry and it makes me worried about anybody who hit that pothole after me,” Pritzl said.
The letter also said, “liability is determined by report and repair date and these records show the city met the standard of due diligence for this date and location.”
Still though, Pritzl is not convinced.
“What I said to them was you’re negligent for anyone who hit that pothole after the 12th, you are negligent because I as a citizen went out of my way to p[protect people, but you as a city did nothing! So when did they fix it? I don’t know,” Pritzl said.