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fromAgnes Schönberger
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shut down
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The city of Offenbach has not been repairing a lowered road for four years. She fears that she will have to pay for damage to a house due to vibrations during the renovation.
When Christos Vittoratos talks about the hole with the giant puddle in front of his house in the Lauterborn district, where children splash around in summer and where ice-skating is possible in winter, it sounds like satire. But the Offenbach entrepreneur doesn’t find the condition of the road funny. Because it has been going on for four years. In 2016, the city built a temporary barrier around the valley. That’s it. Since then, the situation has not changed despite several emails and phone calls.
The city is well aware of the problem, says Vittoratos, who is on the board of the Ernst May Society in Frankfurt. The FR had reported about the giant puddle a year ago. Mayor Felix Schwenke then promised to take care of the matter. He did that too. Vittoratos thanked him, but regretted “that our first contact was due to a puddle”.
However, his hope that the hole would be drained quickly was not fulfilled. In an email at the end of February 2019, Schwenke expressed great understanding that “you don’t like the barrier on your doorstep and the accumulation of water when it rains”. But everything is correct. There are several participants, “but no perpetrators”.
Because the city had not willfully lowered the ground. That happens in many places in Offenbach. The reason for the drop in Egerländer Straße is still unclear. The only thing that is certain is that the hole is responsible for damage to a neighboring house of the Vittoratos. It is not said to be stable. A renovation of the street and sidewalk is not possible because vibrations are inevitable and further damage to the building is to be feared.
And the city does not want to take this liability risk. Vittoratos let her know that she had therefore postponed the work that was already planned for spring 2019 and that she would be sufficient to block the road safety obligation. Another year passed with the fenced pond in the asphalt.
The entrepreneur is still unable to park in front of his front door and has to admonish his two-and-a-half and four-year-old daughters not to run across the street when they park the car opposite. It was normal for the children to have a small lake in front of the house. “You don’t know it any other way.”
According to him, subsidence and pipe breaks occurred earlier in the street and in Lauterborn, but they were always repaired immediately. On request of the FR, the city spokeswoman explained the long procedure by saying that as long as recourse claims for damage to the neighboring house due to vibrations cannot be ruled out, work could not be carried out there.
Vittoratos calls this argument absurd. The renovation of the building was completed months ago. “But the road is as broken as ever.”
When asked again, the city said that the municipal utilities were involved. A result was not available until yesterday.
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