Where's Gary? Where's Dave? Where's This All Headed?

First ward council member Gary Purnhagen (above right) is the chair of the Public Works Board, a group of people we are relying on to finally fix our dangerous and ugly sidewalks.  Gary did not attend the most recent meeting of the PWB, held this past Monday night.  The chair of the PWB didn't show up in person nor did he show up virtually.  (Was he in a body cast in the hospital?)  The person in charge of the meetings and the board missed a meeting that lasted all of 14 minutes.  Maybe if Gary had showed up it would have lasted all of 17 minutes.  (All joking aside, I hope Gary is okay, though I did see him driving his car on State Street earlier this week.)

HUDseen Was Wrong Again! It Was A VANDAL!

It appears that I rushed to yesterday's conclusion about the reason for missing five parking signs and brackets on Columbia Street.  A few hours after I posted that article, I spoke with a parking enforcer on his way to the 700 block of Columbia for the first time on his shift.  He told me that he had been informed that someone had VANDALIZED several of the signs on the south side of Columbia Street.

More Progress With The New Paid Parking System! When Will It End?

Other than a recent quick mention of the city's ten remaining parking kiosks that might someday appear downtown to be utilized for on-street parking (the 6 kiosks out now are only found at parking lots), there has been scant information given recently by HPD's Captain David Miller and Chief Mishanda Franklin regarding the progress (if any) with the city's new paid parking system.  The ambitious new system is certainly not anywhere near being finalized, and changes and corrections are still being made.  Yet there haven't been any parking updates in months, neither on HPD's Fakebook page nor at any of the monthly meetings of the laughably tilted SAFETY Committee.  The silence is deafening.

Lock 'Em Up For At Least 15 Days! And Fine 'Em, Too!

At least 5 years ago (and maybe a whole lot longer), the 4-sided street clock at the southeast corner of the 7th Street Park stopped working.  Since then, three of the clocks have been stuck at 9:08 and one at 11:10 (or thereabouts).  Two or three years ago, DPW Superman Rob Perry told the council that the clock had been a gift long ago to the city from a local social organizational but that it was now too expensive to repair.  And there it still stands.  Doing nothing. Mostly ignored; in the way; a perfect symbol of how Hudson seems to always be stuck in some sort of limbo, never making any progress.  Broken.  Stuck.  I'm waiting for a new council member to ask Rob what the deal is with the street clock so that he can repeat what he told a previous council.

Can The City Afford An Auditor? From The Looks Of Things, No, It Might Be Too Late For A Much Needed Auditor!

Why does this public trash can exist where it is?  Why should we pay one dime to have DPW empty and service it (I won't say maintain!)?  There is no reason for it to be there.  It screams, YOU ARE WASTING MONEY BY KEEPING ME HERE!  

It's pretty easy to draw a line from that bit of city infrastructure to the city's fiscal woes. 

Too Much Idling! Much Too Much!

According to an automatic email reply I received today, our Police Chief, Mishanda Franklin, is "out of the office" this entire week and Monday and Tuesday of next week.  While the city waits for the mayor to appoint a new Police Commissioner (is that even happening?), Franklin is also the Acting Police Commissioner.   This has been the case for several months.  In the 3 years that Mishanda Franklin has been our Police Chief, she has been on two maternity leaves of 4 or 5 months each.

How To Ensure Pedestrians Will Continue To Be Put In Harm's Way: Keep Quiet, Do Absolutely Nothing and Ignore The Situation!

On Saturday, December 20th, 2025, at approximately 9:15 am, no more than 40 hours after a city resident walking in a downtown crosswalk was struck violently by a turning vehicle, another person walking in a city pedestrian crosswalk was hit by a turning vehicle.  THE TWO COLLISIONS OCCURED IN THE SAME PEDESTRIAN CROSSWALK at the intersection of Park Place & Warren Street.  The two collisions occurred in the one pedestrian crosswalk of the two at the busy intersection that does not have a flashing pedestrian signal.   No mention of either incident has been made publicly by anyone from City Hall.