Robert Perry's DPW At Their Best

Sometime in late fall of 2021 at an Informal Council meeting, first ward council member Art Frick offered a rare criticism to Robert Perry after the DPW Superintendent had finished with his monthly report.  It went something like this:  "Mr. Perry, I heard from a constituent of mine who was not at all happy with recent DPW work of painting certain curbs with yellow paint.  She told me that since no cones were placed near the wet paint, a vehicle had driven over the curb and trailed wet paint into the street.  She said that it was nothing less than a crapshow."  (That last word I do specifically remember).  I don't recall exactly how Perry responded (he was on Zoom, of course), but it certainly wasn't an apology.

The same exact thing played out then in the third ward at the intersection of State and 6th Streets.  DPW painted the curbs surrounding new curb ramps which Colarusso had just installed, but placed no cones near the wet paint.  They painted the curbs yellow and left the scene.  A vehicle soon took a right turn too sharply at the northeast corner and trailed yellow paint onto 6th Street, while leaving tire tracks on the both sides of the curb ramp.  Nearly two years later, you can still see the tire mark in the street. 

Within a few months of DPW's work being completed at 6th and State, the paint on the curbs began to peel off on its own (rain seems to do the trick), and two of Colarusso's concrete curb ramps began to crack.

What you can also see less than two years after the curb painting by DPW (and what you would have easily noticed a year ago, also) are all the curbs at each corner of 6th and State missing most of their yellow paint.  So, we have relatively new curb ramps that look like crap, yellow chips of paint in the street and in the sewer system, and motorists who don't know that they are parking too close to the pedestrian walkway because the curb is no longer yellow.  A crapshow, indeed.

Maybe the yellow paint wasn't 
necessary after all

Cracked curb ramp, missing paint

Quality work from DPW, 
designed to last

This curb was painted less
than two years ago

Notice the paint chips in the street

Then there's the issue of the red ADA curb ramp mats.  Two of the mats at the northeast corner of 6th and State are unstable -- step on them and your foot sinks and inch or so.  Whatever is directly below the mats is not concrete, it is soft.  There are many of these mats all over town that are broken, wavy, missing pieces, ugly, full of gravel, (ironically) dangerous and in need of replacement, but DPW doesn't seem to care.

You might guess that Hudson is bankrupt

One wonders if DPW will bother to find the time and some better paint (or someone who knows how to paint concrete properly) to make the curbs at 6th and State and elsewhere look decent and proper this year.  Don't count on it.  Robert Perry certainly doesn't make enough money to justify paying attention to such an annoyance. (But he recently spent over two thousand dollars on the 4 pedestrian crosswalks at Warren and 7th!)