Is It Possible YOU GUYS Are Being Lied To?

The 4th monthly meeting of the so-called SAFETY Committee that took place last night was nothing more than a farce.  This may have been the worst, messiest, most unproductive meeting so far.  It seems that the more the committee is asked to do, the less they get accomplished.  And HPD is no help.

Here are just a few things from the meeting to laugh (or weep) about.

Whose Garbage Is It? And Who Should Pay To Dispose Of It?

On Saturday, I was surprised to see that the large mattress behind the long vacant property at 538 State Street had been removed.  I thought it would never happen.  That was the mattress that had been lying there in plain sight since at least last November when I first noticed it.  It took a few emails to the mayor and one Hudson Hub request two months ago to get it removed, and I can only assume that DPW took care of it, which means city taxpayers, not the property owner, paid to have it disposed of.

Then, yesterday late in the afternoon, I noticed another development having to do with garbage, this one just as fascinating philosophically.  There were two new public trash cans in town. The short metal trash cans surrounding the pocket park in the 300 block of Warren had been replaced with larger, wooden ones that are typical of those found downtown.  Two hours after Mel's Bakery & Cafe had closed, the new can closest to the park (and to the bakery/cafe situated in the park) was overflowing with trash, made up mostly, if not entirely, of cafe customers' disposables. (The metal can on the sidewalk in front of the park had also been replaced with a wooden one, though it was not overflowing.)

How Bad Is The Parking Problem Surrounding The New Pocketbook Business Complex? How About 5 Inches Bad!

 

Last fall, when our new neighbors at the Pocketbook Hotel hired a contractor to replace the sidewalks and curbs surrounding their block-long property, they forgot to do one little thing.  (Well, two, really.  The sidewalk on 6th Street is one foot too narrow.) They forgot to tell the contractor to apply yellow paint to the new corner curb ramps and NO PARKING ZONES beyond the corners.  Where there was yellow paint on curbs telling drivers to stay away, we have been without it for about 7 months.  And no one from DPW or the Code Enforcement Office (directly across the street) cared to make sure the curbs got painted right away before the weather turned cold, if only because no one is ever paying attention.  (I was recently told by Henry Haddad that DPW will get to painting the curbs yellow sometime soon.)  

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.