After recent rainfall hit San Jose, locals were once again out doing the work that municipal crews are ostensibly paid to handle — pulling debris from clogged drains to prevent street flooding and property damage. It's become something of a recurring ritual in the Bay Area: the skies open up, the drains fail, and regular people in rain boots become the de facto public works department.

As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly: "Makes you wonder what the local governments spend our tax dollars on if ordinary citizens have to step up and do these things ourselves."

It's a fair question — and one that gets sharper every budget cycle. San Jose's city budget tops $5 billion. The Department of Transportation, which oversees storm drain maintenance, isn't exactly running a lemonade stand. And yet every time it rains more than a drizzle, we get the same movie: flooded intersections, overwhelmed infrastructure, and neighbors doing DIY flood mitigation at 10 p.m.

Look, nobody's saying infrastructure maintenance is easy. Storm drains get clogged by leaves, trash, and the general entropy of urban life. But that's precisely why we fund city departments — to handle the predictable consequences of predictable weather. Rain in Northern California is not a black swan event. It happens every winter. The city has had months to clear drains, inspect grates, and prepare.

The fact that some residents have essentially turned drain unclogging into a public service hobby — one guy even bought an 18,000-lumen light so he can do it more safely at night — is both admirable and deeply embarrassing for local government.

We should be thanking these folks. But we should also be asking harder questions about why their volunteerism is necessary in the first place. When taxpayers are literally out there doing the government's job for free, it's not a heartwarming community story. It's an accountability problem.