How City Hall Keeps Our Taxes High And DPW Keeps Our Streets And Sewers Full Of Debris

As you are likely aware, the City of Hudson has been doing its best for quite some time to sell off two of its properties on Warren Street.  What is really perplexing to me is that the city never attempts (at least as far as I know) to get rid of the vacant lot known as 516 Columbia Street.  

According to public records, the city purchased or took over ownership of the lot in 1992. The sole purpose of the .11 acre lot seems to be a means for DPW to spend its time and our money on every two weeks for much of the year in the form of maintenance, trash removal, and clipping the grass and weeds. It's such a wise use of taxpayer funds, week after week and year after year, don't you think?

This morning, I noticed two DPW employees trimming the grass and weeds in the useless lot.  Each worker had a gasoline-powered weed whacker, since using a lawn mower is definitely out of the question given the amount of things waiting to destroy a mower blade -- large stones, trash, and, especially, exposed roots.  The work was slow-going, as you can imagine.  The lot is approximately 4,200 square feet in size, and our DPW essentially mows the lawn with weed whackers, a tool that creates an incredible amount of air pollution (not to mention noise pollution).  I would say that it took the two workers at least 45 minutes to finish maintaining 516 Columbia today, perhaps a lot longer.  

It's great that the city doesn't let the lot look like crap for too long, but shouldn't they be maintaining it with the intention of selling it?  Am I missing something?  I've never heard Robert Perry come before the Common Council and plead with them to sell 516 Columbia, have you?  Apparently, like the rest of City Hall (hello Treasurer's Office!), Mr. Perry is perfectly fine with spending so much time and money on the lot, too.

While DPW had its maintenance crew of two men working in the city's useless vacant lot that it doesn't ever seem to want to sell, here is something that the crew should have been cleaning up that has been ignored for at least a week:

Starting about a week ago in the near nightly downpours, large and small piles of rubble, silt, dirt and debris were deposited on both sides of the 800 block of Warren Street, the junk having been washed down from Prospect Avenue and Worth Avenue. (I call it washout.)  But DPW's priority right now is spending time and money on a vacant lot they have no use for.  Removing piles of washout in the street, under cars, at the curb, and covering at least one storm drain is not on the priority list.  If the street sweeper has been out in the past week (and why wouldn't it have been?) it seems to be of no help on Warren Street.  

This washout on Warren Street, besides being ugly and dangerous to car and truck drivers and cyclists, is just the type of debris that DPW Superintendent Robert Perry repeatedly tells us is so damaging to his water treatment plant on Dock Street.  He shows us pictures of the street sweeper, telling us how it must be out doing its thing every night.  And he shows us pictures of gravel in the street that the sweeper can't get to when cars are parked on the wrong side of the street.  It's like a cruel joke from a cynical prankster!  How can we take him seriously at meetings when he shows his pictures of all the damage that his water plant sustains and all the maintenance it needs?  Why is he showing us pictures of the street sweeper when the washout on Warren is all there in plain sight in the street waiting to be removed before another downpour comes along to wash it into our expensive and ancient sewer system?  That is, of course, if it can find an unclogged drain.  

It's as if Robert Perry doesn't know the washout is there, or would never think that torrential rains might just cause washout at the bottom of two hills, one of which he lives near the bottom of.   Is the dude blind?  This can't be the first time this has ever happened on Warren Street or in the entire city, can it be?

Does Robert Perry need someone to tell him to have a crew get to the 800 block of Warren to do a little tidying up with brooms and shovels or a street sweeper?  Or is he fine with just leaving it all there, perhaps hoping for more in the next downpour soon to arrive?  How much debris in the street does he require before doing something about it?  Oh, hold on, I forgot -- his crew is too busy over at 516 Columbia ridding the entire lot of grass and weeds with a pair of weed whackers!  They don't have time to remove the washout.

The washout from the South 4th Street water main break 9 days ago is still untouched by DPW, left spread all around the intersection of 4th and Warren.  And then there are these clogged storm drains I noticed yesterday.  What does it matter?

To read more on 516 Columbia, from February, click here: Just Sell It!