Angelica Garcia had just bought the car for her daughter to drive to school when it hit a rough patch of pavement near 27th and National on Sunday and left her with a flat tire. She says three other vehicles suffered the same fate at the same spot. “We got really scared,” Garcia said of the moment her family realized what had happened.
Garcia described the damage as the result of a pothole, according to FOX6 News Milwaukee, which reported that her car and three others got flat tires after striking the spot near 27th and National. Neighbor Walter Garron witnessed and recorded the impact involving Garcia's car, then called it in to the city and followed up the next day with Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa. By the time FOX6 checked the location, the spot had already been patched.
Milwaukee's Department of Public Works offered a different account of the same stretch of road to TMJ4, describing it as a road depression rather than a pothole, caused by underground utility work that had been done at the intersection, with the replacement surface sinking afterward. DPW told the station it would have the contractor return to fix it. Whichever term applies, Garron isn't convinced the fix will hold. “They have done the same thing before and it did not work,” he said, describing a cycle of patch jobs at the same location that keep failing.
A City Already Drowning in Repair Requests
The National Avenue trouble spot is one small piece of a much larger problem. Milwaukee received about 24,000 pothole service requests during the first eight months of 2026, according to WTMJ, a total that already blew past the city's previous full-year record of 16,804 complaints. Crews managed to resolve roughly 15,300 of those requests in that same stretch, the station reported, leaving thousands still outstanding.
Spectrum News 1 put the tally at 23,075 service requests as of Aug. 31, far above the city's typical annual average of 8,600, and reported a backlog of 7,775 unfulfilled requests, according to Spectrum News 1. The exact figures differ between outlets, but the direction is the same: complaints are piling up faster than crews can clear them. Earlier in the year, the surge was already visible — DPW logged 5,016 pothole patch requests in the first three months of 2026 alone, a 65% jump over the typical pace, per WISN.
Residents Describe a Pattern of Quick Fixes That Don't Last
Drivers elsewhere in the city describe similar frustrations with patches that don't hold. Jeremy Wilbur said a patch near Oakland and Locust had already begun deteriorating earlier in the month, the same TMJ4 report noted. DPW's standard repair process involves sweeping out the hole, filling it with asphalt in layers, compacting each layer and rolling the surface smooth, according to the station — a process residents like Garron say sometimes simply doesn't take.
The financial toll on drivers varies but adds up quickly. Stephan Brannan said a pothole near 34th and Lincoln damaged his vehicle, requiring two replacement tires and balancing work that cost him about $240, per the same TMJ4 account. Milwaukee driver Eliot Hess said a pothole caused $800 in damage to his car, according to WISN, while another driver whose suspension was damaged told the outlet they chose to pay out of pocket rather than file a claim, since the repair cost less than their insurance deductible.
City Response and a Push for Outside Help
At a town hall at Hamilton High School, Ald. Peter Burgelis said his district office alone received 389 calls about roads, alleys and sidewalks between Oct. 6, 2025, and the time of the meeting, according to the FOX6 report — and he noted the city's overall volume of road-related requests runs far higher than that number. Burgelis introduced a resolution to the city's Public Works Committee in September aimed at helping DPW identify which pothole and alley repairs could go to outside contractors, with state aids and reallocated funds potentially providing additional money for broader transportation and road work, per his comments to FOX6. He said that extra funding could allow the city to take on more repair work overall.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson's proposed 2027 budget would raise road-repair funding from $16.7 million to $19.2 million, Spectrum News 1 reported. The scale of the underlying problem is steep: Milwaukee has 466 miles of local roads rated poor by the Pavement Quality Index, with repair costs estimated to exceed $81.5 million, according to a release from Urban Milwaukee.
What Drivers Can — and Cannot — Recover
For drivers hoping to get reimbursed after hitting a bad stretch of road, the path isn't guaranteed. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation states plainly that if a vehicle is damaged by a pothole on a state highway, the state or county is not liable for the damage. Drivers pursuing a claim typically need documentation and proof tying the damage to city negligence or unlawful conduct, a bar that has left some, like the driver with suspension damage, to simply absorb the cost themselves rather than pursue reimbursement.
