Our $125,000 DPW Superintendent is a strange bird, isn't he?
One week ago, eleven days after Harry Howard Avenue at the flats along Underwood Pond was closed to all traffic because of sudden major road failure there, Rob Perry made an announcement on the city's website about the situation. Perry had had over one week to assess the very serious situation. (While Perry's name was not included on the "Harry Howard Avenue Closure Update," it certainly couldn't have come from anyone but him.)
The new 4-foot-wide concrete sidewalk on North 6th Street between Prospect and Washington was created late last fall by the new business complex known as Pocketbook Hudson. But our code is explicit: new sidewalks must be no less than 5 feet wide. A four-foot-wide sidewalk does not allow two people to walk side by side comfortably, safely or possibly at all. The Code Enforcement Department is literally directly across the street from the city's latest non-compliant pedestrian sidewalk.
During the few months in 2014 when I was a proud Hudson Parking Enforcer, I'm almost certain that I never once had to explain to anyone how to pay for their parking space. No one who had just gotten out of their car parked in a metered space ever approached me with a puzzled look to ask me how to put a quarter in the parking meter next to their car. No one ever asked me why it was so difficult to pay for their parking space or if they needed a mobile phone to pay for it. (Yes, I did get the occasional, "Do you have four quarters for a dollar?")
Just today or yesterday, a new fancy coffee joint opened up in the 500 block of Warren nearly directly across the street from the popular Supernatural Coffee & Bakery shop. I, for one, am glad to see that the window and door of the long vacant storefront that once held the 5-Star bodega are no longer coved in paper. But another coffee place? Will Rev even bother to reopen?
It was about two years ago that the dead tree protruding through the hole in the middle of the metal tree grate in front of 414 Warren disappeared. It was ugly, insulting, leaning and long dead. Very dead, just like you might be if you step in the 12-inch diameter hole that is still in the middle of the tree grate on the sidewalk after two years, inches from a regularly occupied parking space in the heart of downtown and inches from the center of an often-bustling sidewalk. The message from Hudson City Hall - particularly from HPD, whose captain and chief are part of Margaret Morris's new so-called SAFETY Committee and whose parking enforcers walk past that gaping hole multiple times 6 days a week - is clear: We don't give a damn about any of you, whether you are a resident, a visitor, disabled or a child. Or one of our parking enforcers, for that matter!
Our $125,000 DPW Superintendent is a strange bird, isn't he? One week ago, eleven days after Harry Howard Avenue at the flats along Unde...
