TIVERTON — He had only recently moved in to his 3 O’Connell Road house (off Robert Gray Avenue) in Tiverton when Brian Tucker was pleasantly surprised to watch in early December as contractor Cardi Corporation came by and paved his road one night.

“I thought, ‘That’s very nice of them — I move in and they give me nice, new pavement.’ And this road wasn’t bad to begin with. We had one of the better roads in Tiverton.”

His opinion changed after the first few rains.

“The water rushed right along the road and washed out my side yard and undermined my neighbor’s yard.”

He went to the town, repeatedly, he said, and asked for help. The paving job had “messed up the flow,” he argued.

More recently came another nighttime surprise, a fresh “Cape Cod berm, that’s what they call it,” along O’Connell Road’s edge. That ‘Cape Cod berm’ is really “what anyone else would call a curb, but a curb done all wrong.”

“I immediately said to myself, ‘What in God’s name is this mess?’”

First off, Mr. Tucker said, “You don’t just put a curb on top of asphalt … When the plows come along they are going to break it up. It’s not held down — it’s not part of the road structure.”

Second, “It’s not straight, not even close.” The curb meanders not just by inches but by several feet, he said. “It looks like what would happen if someone stopped by the bar for a few pops then decided to go lay down some curbing.”

Adding insult to injury, he said, a crew just did another nearby street, “and that one was perfect.”

He’s been back to the Tiverton Department of Public Works (DPW) repeatedly, he said, to no avail. “I’ve asked for blueprints and specs — they don’t have any. Why would Tiverton pay for a job that’s not done right?”

“I take great pride in my home and yard, you could say I’m particular,” Mr. Tucker said. “But now all I see is this messed up curb — and I still get water.”

Town response …

“It is correct that the berm is not placed in a straight line,” said DPW Director Richard Rogers when asked about the road. “However it does follow the edge of the road pavement.”

Mr. Rogers disagreed with another contention, saying “It is acceptable to place it (the berm) directly on asphalt,” and it does “act as a drainage component.”

The DPW has looked at the berm as asked, and “The berm is acceptable,” he said, “although it is not as aesthetically pleasing as a berm that is placed in a straight line on a straight road.”

As for the road being paved in the first place, “Paving replacement timing is often debated, but both O’Connell Road and nearby Terry Lane were in need of an upgrade.”