Who Do They Work For?

Garbage truck, perhaps?

Sometime late last year during an Informal Council meeting, I heard  Liz York, the director of the Youth Department, request funds to purchase a used pickup truck for her department.  At least one of the reasons she expressed for the need of the truck was that the new vans the department had were not the right use for removing the trash at Oakdale Lake.  Essentially, as I understood it, the garbage was too messy for the clean vans, and a pickup truck would be more appropriate.  The council approved her request and a white pickup was recently purchased (at what cost I do not know).

Sometime last fall I noticed that the DPW maintenance crew (primarily tasked with maintaining the parks and city property, but also picking litter form the sidewalks, etc.) had gotten rid of their rusty, noisy, old DPW van and swapped it for an old, somewhat rusty and noisy Youth Department van.  The DPW crew is working out of a van with a Hudson Youth Department logo on its sides and back doors.  

The Youthful DPW at work

DPW regularly empties every public trash can in the city, including those found in our parks -- EXCEPT FOR OAKDALE LAKE PARK.  That responsibility lies in the hands of the Youth Department, whose main office is located on South 3rd Street.   One morning last summer I noticed someone emptying the trash can along the shore of Oakdale Lake across from the beach.  He had driven an unmarked van right down to the trash can to empty it. One van, one can, one man.  The van had no logo on it and the driver refused to answer my simple question:  "Is that your personal vehicle?"  It obviously was.  He threatened to call the police.

So, thankfully, the Youth Department, BECAUSE IT MUST EMPTY THE TRASH CANS AT THE CITY'S LARGEST PUBLIC PARK, now owns a pickup truck that will mostly sit parked and unused and unneeded at the Youth Center on South 3rd Street.  And the DPW maintenance crew is blessed to drive all over town all day, 5 days a week, in a noisy, ugly heap that has Youth's logo on it. They put all sorts of equipment and stuff in that van, perhaps even the occasional bag or two of garbage.

At a council meeting several years ago when Nick Zachos was the Director of the Youth Department and overflowing trash cans at Oakdale were a regular sight, I asked Rob Perry of DPW why the Youth Department, not DPW, was responsible for emptying the trash cans at Oakdale since DPW does it everywhere else in town.  I remember his reply well because it was so stunning to me:  "We do enough favors for them," he said.