It was on Tuesday of this past week — July 1, the start of a new fiscal year — that Market Street in Wheeling was supposed to be paved.

Or at least that’s what the schedule for the Downtown Wheeling Streetscape project indicates. In fact, the paving of 12th, 14th and portions of 16th Street were supposed to occur in June.

That didn’t happen, either.

So here we sit, in July, and Market Street is a total fiasco. The road is a mess, filled with craters, bumps and more.

This project is nearly three years old. It was supposed to finish later this year — but who knows if that still holds. Meanwhile, businesses continue to be forced to deal with a mess in front of their shops — a mess that is keeping people away from downtown.

It took only 13 months to build the Empire State Building, yet we’re heading on three years for new sidewalks, (someday) new streets and a bunch of cutouts called bioswales. Perhaps someone can explain that?