Is It Possible We Are Governed By Fools Who Don't Know How To Manage Much Of Anything, Including Money? It Sure Looks That Way!

For the past 24 hours I had been planning on using the picture above for an article simply titled, STOP SIGN NUMBER TWO.  That's the new stop sign and pole at Warren & Park that DPW installed (once again 8 feet from the curb) on Wednesday to replace the sign and pole that were knocked over on Tuesday after surviving two months of thousands of close calls from trucks, tractor trailers, bad drivers, and drivers confused about the new, safer intersection. Notice the vertical reflective red strip on the pole; it was not included in the first stop sign effort!

Then, this morning, I came across this:

Thank Goodness The City Got Rid Of Those Old Parking Meters So That Parking Revenue Could Flood The City!

The $10,000 (plus $100-plus per month "connectivity fee") parking kiosk for the 700 block of Warren (just beyond the grey car in the background) is meant to be used by people parking their cars in the unmarked parking spaces seen above.  That so-called kiosk has been OUT OF SERVICE and DEAD for at least 13 f'ng weeks, and Parking Captain David Miller continues to see no reason to attach an OUT OF SERVICE sign to it or bother explaining to the public and the so-called SAFETY Committee for months what is going on with it.  (The kiosk's solar panel has been kaput for months, failing us no more than three months after it was installed, a fact I learned on the sidewalk from a city employee.) And why should we expect PC Miller to do such things that are far beyond his paygrade, not in his job description, and possibly beyond his mental acuity?  Why should we expect anyone at Hudson City Hall or at HPD to do such basic, decent things that come naturally to any self-respecting city hall in America that is occupied by adults?

Raise Those Parking Ticket Fees Right Away, Our Mayor Needs Another Stop Sign And Pole!!

It was August 25th when I first wrote about mayor Ferris' new stop sign at Warren & Park, one week after it had been installed 8 feet from the curb.  At the time, I gave it two weeks to be demolished.  In a rare case, I was proven wrong.  I should have chosen TWO MONTHS instead!

Earlier tonight, about 55 days after Joe Ferris' new stop sign atop a new sign pole was installed by DPW, I noticed it was no longer there.  In its place, in the street 8 feet from the curb, was a much shorter temporary stop sign.  Anyone with a pair of eyes and half a brain could have seen this coming.  I did.  What am I, a genius?

Why Did Officer Eric Dunham Depart HPD After Just Three Years? We May Never Know. Shouldn't We Know?

 

As regular HUDseen readers may know, during the HPD report at last month's meeting of the so-called SAFETY Committee, Chief Mishanda Franklin mentioned that a police officer had recently resigned.  "We are down an officer.  Under unfortunate circumstance we had an officer resign last week.  So, we will be our doing our best to fill that position prior to year end."  Head Code Enforcement Officer Nick Fox, sitting next to Franklin and always on top of safety issues, then asked a critical question that was begging to be asked:  "Do you guys hire part-time or is it only full-time?"  (I'm not kidding!)  Is Nick looking for another job?  A new job?

Blog vs Rob: Who Wins? Hudson Does! Sanity Does!

This past Wednesday at 1:45 in the afternoon, just 48 hours after last Monday's HUDseen article showing the Fire Department's and DPW's absurd, obscene, and hypocritical approach to out of service fire hydrants, I came across a DPW Water Department crew of three repairing a long out of service hydrant on the sidewalk adjacent to the south side of Bliss Towers and across Columbia Street from another very large apartment building.  Can you imagine?  

This Is Not A Story About Traffic Signs. It Is An Examination of Normalized Dysfunction, Incompetence, and Wasting of Time & Money At Hudson City Hall.

If memory serves me, I believe it took two months, possibly three, for the Common Council (or was it just the so-called SAFETY Committee?) to come to the conclusion that it would not be possible for the city to be like Manhattan where the NO RIGHT TURN ON RED rule exists at every signalized intersection without the use of signs.  A blanket or default rule, if you will.  But that was the hope -- to make it illegal in Hudson to turn right on red at every intersection with a traffic light, likely with the only signs indicating the rule at every city entrance.  It sure would have saved on the cost of installing dozens of NO TURN ON RED signs all over town, a project that Rob Perry claimed would cost about $300 per installed sign, including hardware.  Then, in early June at a SAFETY Committee meeting, with the grand right on red blanket rule idea officially nixed at the previous month's meeting of the Code & Infrastructure Committee, chair Henry Haddad made his first ever sign request of HPD to hand off to DPW:  three DO NOT ENTER signs and one NO TURN ON RED sign.  That ONE sign was meant for North 6th Street traffic approaching Columbia, and it was installed within a few weeks. (See above.)

Is Our Mayor Sleeping On The Second Floor Of City Hall At Night Too? Including On Holiday Weekends?

 

It's not unusual to see our mayor's personal car parked in one of his two designated parking spaces directly behind City Hall late at night on just about any day of the week. Or on a Saturday or Sunday morning, exactly as I noticed his car parked this morning.  (There's also a space for the mayor in the parking lot.)  In other words, our new mayor, who lives in a house he owns just a 5-minute walk from his place of employment, has decided that the two parking spaces behind City Hall reserved for his one car are his 24/7 personal parking spaces, whether or not he is working on making Hudson a better place to live and do business in, and even if he is out wining and dining in town or sleeping in his bed three blocks away.  He has decided that leaving his car parked behind City Hall while he sleeps at home is perfectly acceptable, implying that every employee working at City Hall ought to take advantage of the situation.