Most of us who drive around Jamestown, if the street is empty, have tried to slalom around sunken manhole covers in an attempt to save their car’s suspension systems from certain ruin.

Drilling one of those metal covers, sunken to some 6 to 8 inches below the road’s surface after repeated repavings or collars that keep dropping year after year, at 30 miles an hour can elicit an audible yell from a car’s shocks or struts.

So we can sympathize with Peter Miraglia’s wife, who recently sprained an ankle on one of the sunken manhole covers while unloading items from her car. The manhole covers can certainly be a pain the public has begrudgingly accepted.

We once asked Mark Schlemmer, a city DPW senior engineer, about the manhole covers. The covers are originally set just below the blacktop so snow plows won’t catch them and damage the plow, the manhole cover and the street. Over time the frame around the manhole cover becomes weak and settles into the highway deeper than city officials would like.

Schlemmer said those get repaired regularly by the Public Works Department and Jamestown Board of Public Utilities during regular city road construction projects, but that manhole covers on state road projects often aren’t touched.

Manpower and money for road maintenance are the real culprits here, of course. The city could create a separate set of projects for several years bringing manhole covers close to the road’s surface level, but that sort of money was never available. And the city missed an opportunity with $28.3 million in ARPA funding from the federal government to do something with manhole covers that drive the public crazy each and every year.

As we move into a new year, coming up with a plan to remedy some of these sunken manhole covers would certainly be appreciated by the driving and walking public. Six years ago, there had yet to be a study done to compile a list of the worst sunken manholes in the city. Doing one would be a good place to start.