A Los Angeles resident was stunned by a comically sloppy pothole repair job outside his home that took more than a year to be completed, with freshly poured asphalt spilling over onto the sidewalk and fractured tiles.
A Reddit user posted pictures of the botched repair on the website's Los Angeles community on Tuesday, just days after Mayor Karen Bass was brutally mocked for attempting a 'Mamdani-style' pothole fix video elsewhere in the city that went terribly wrong.
In the latest example of LA government at work, the Reddit user was stunned after finding 'the worst pothole filling I’ve ever seen.'
He explained the request to fill potholes outside his house was made on May 9, 2025. More than 14 months later, he woke up to the sound of an asphalt truck outside.
He said city workers stayed for about 30 minutes before leaving. Once they were gone, the Angeleno went to inspect the work and was shocked.
'I’m laughing at how bad this is,' he wrote in the Reddit post. 'They leave asphalt everywhere, it’s not even at all and they just splash it around everywhere.'
Indeed, the photos he provided show a large area of the street covered in fresh asphalt spread unevenly and spilling onto sidewalk tiles.
A large gap in the asphalt revealing unpaved ground can also be seen in the photos.
A Los Angeles resident was stunned to find this comically sloppy pothole repair job outside his home that took 15 months for the city to complete
The resident posted this and the above photo on Reddit and wrote: 'I’m laughing at how bad this is'
The City of Los Angeles allocated $89.2 million in 2025 to pavement preservation out of its $208 million budget for the Bureau of Street Services
According to Open Budget, which compiles the City of Los Angeles' publicly reported finances, the Bureau of Street Services had a $208 million budget in 2025. The department is responsible for repairing potholes.
Within that budget, $89.2 million was allocated to pavement preservation, which equates to about 43 percent of the total.
Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, who will face incumbent Mayor Bass in the November election, recently stated that the city currently only uses 12 of its 28 pothole repair trucks.
A $1 billion budget deficit prevents the city from paying enough staff to operate all of the vehicles, Raman said.
Los Angeles does not report how much it costs to fix an individual pothole on average, but the Bureau of Street Services reported repairing a total of 71,865 potholes in fiscal year 2025.
The Bureau also reported that it allocated about half of its $89.2 million pavement preservation budget towards 'Construction Expense.'
If every single dollar of that allocation only went towards fixing potholes, which is not the case, each individual pothole repair would still come out to an average of around $620. That is also before accounting for salaries, equipment and other costs.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Mayor Bass's Office for comment regarding the sloppy repair job posted on Reddit and to request an estimate for the average cost of repairing potholes in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass recently posted a video on Instagram touting the city's dedication to repairing potholes
Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman recently stated that the city only operates 12 out of its 28 pothole repair trucks due to a $1 billion budget deficit
The recent complaint posted on Reddit came just days after Bass touted her administration's dedication to repairing potholes in a widely mocked video posted on Instagram.
The post was made in response to an LA resident who created a video with the caption, 'Asking LA's Mayor to "Mamdani" A Pothole,' in reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressing complaints posted by New Yorkers on social media.
In Bass's video, she said city crews went to the location of the pothole, 'but unfortunately there was a car that was here, so we couldn't repair the pothole.'
The mayor's solution was to put up a temporary 'No Parking' sign in front of the car, 'so that hopefully there won't be anybody parked here tomorrow morning, and the city crews will be back.'
Bass then said that Angelenos can call 311 about any complaints regarding city conditions and added: 'We're gonna get this done.'
People in the comments thought the video was hilarious. 'She made a video about how she did NOT fix the pothole,' one user wrote.
In a widely mocked video replying to this post from an LA resident asking to fix a pothole, Bass said a car was parked over the pothole so the city was not yet able to repair it
Others questioned why the mayor did not simply return the next morning to create the video after the pothole was repaired, and yet others said that calling 311 rarely leads to a response from the city.
The LA resident who created the original video Bass responded to did update the caption of her post and wrote: 'The pothole has been fixed.'
The Daily Mail also reached out to Bass's office to confirm that the pothole in the video was repaired and to request comment regarding criticism of her video.
