How To Chase People Away From Hudson, One Deplorable Picnic Table At A Time!

This morning, a DPW employee using a ride-on mower cut the grass of the lawn at the Furgary shacks, as has been done weekly for the past two or three months.  The broken down table in the middle of the lawn that the mower rolled past hasn't always been in that spot (someone moved it there recently from near the dirt road), but it has been on the lawn for at least two months in essentially the same condition.  It is, and has been for months, useless, ugly, obscene, unwelcome, insulting, and if you ask any parent of a child, dangerous. Some would call this area (or at least assume it to be) a public park.  If DPW mows and "maintains" the area, why wouldn't it be considered a public park for anyone to be in and enjoy?  Call it whatever you like, the area is open to the public and the grass is never too long, which makes the broken down table all the more puzzling and concerning.

If asked about it at a council meeting, I'm fairly certain I know how DPW Superintendent Robert Perry would explain why his department does not remove the useless, broken and dangerous table, and why his employees continue to mow the grass around it for months.

It would go something like this:

Here's the story:  I can't help you with this -- it's not our table, and DPW did not put it there.  We can't touch it.  Talk to the people at Kite's Nest, they probably put it there.  Other than that, I don't know anything about the table and there's nothing DPW can do about it.  You need to understand that all we do at the Furgary is mow the grass, trim the overgrown vegetation, pick up the garbage and do our best to patch the holes in the shacks.  We do plenty of maintenance there.  It's not DPW's job to try to track down the owner of the table or whoever decided to destroy it.  Sorry.

Mr. Perry is likely correct in one regard:  Kite's Nest probably put that picnic table on the lawn.  Last year there were two tables on the lawn, both in proper condition and often used for Kite's Nest's children's classes.  But that is beside the point and a mere distraction to a pathetic approach to a quality-of-life issue we can all do without.

Sadly, though, this is usually how things operate at DPW; I have seen and heard it several times over the years from Mr. Perry:  It's called the not our problem and we don't care approach, though Mr. Perry certainly would not refer to it in public as such.  

How Mr. Perry would respond to a question about why DPW hasn't done anything about the equally dangerous and disgraceful table in the pocket park of the 200 block of Warren is a toss-up.  He might just say that no one from DPW was aware of it, which would be comical.  Or, he might slip up and speak his mind, saying that he doesn't care and he can't be bothered with it.  That would be comical and a bit painful to hear, but the truth hurts.

And, please, don't get me started about the table in the 500 block of Warren pocket park that has been covered in graffiti for well over a year and that our DPW superintendent and our mayor have been well aware for at least the past 9 months.  You know, the one with the FUCK and the BITCH and the vulgar drawing that one would expect to find in a public park in a slum, not in a public park along the main street in the central business district of a world-renowned city known for its million-dollar homes, high property taxes, obscenely expensive hotel rooms, some of the finest restaurants in the Hudson Valley that visitors from all over the world dine in, a DPW superintendent with an annual salary of over $115,000, as well as a mayor who has a salary of $75,000.  Yes, right here in Hudson, New York, plain as day.  It seems surreal, doesn't it?  Unbelievable, perhaps?  Believe it.

Over one f'ing year!  There is no doubt in my mind that Kamal Johnson and Robert Perry find this table amusing.  They probably get together occasionally to have a good laugh about it.