HUDseen: It's Painfully Clear That The Left Hand Doesn't Know What The Right Hand Is Doing At DPW (Business As Usual)

It has been 10 weeks since I last posted about the Washington Street dirt lot, where DPW Superintendent Robert Perry allowed far too much debris and fill to be haphazardly dumped last year. In March, the newly created steep and unstable portion of the lot nearest to Oakdale suffered a mudslide, creating a problem with the sewer pipe located at the outer edge of the lot that feeds the creek. Then the entire lot got a failing grade from a subsequent NY State DEC inspection after I made a phone call to them. DPW was then forced to spend a few days digging to unclog the pipe and clear things up near the creek. Unbelievably, at least perhaps to some, things have recently gotten even dumber and more WTF.

The DEC employee in charge of the inspection, Jamie Malcolm, told me several weeks ago that he had ordered DPW Superintendent Robert Perry to get the lot properly stabilized and seeded, and that there was to be no more dumping of anything in the lot. In other words, clean up the mess you created and stop dumping there to avoid more problems until we come back for a final inspection. Simple enough directions to follow from the state agency trying to keep our planet habitable, right? Well, maybe at any other city besides Hudson, or any other department besides Hudson DPW.

Last Friday while walking past the lot, I noticed that at least 3 dump trucks full of debris and dirt, including huge chunks of concrete, had been dumped in the lot. The unwelcome stuff appears to have come from the Stewart's intersection improvement project, where some major sidewalk excavation took place last week. DPW Commissioner Peter Bujanow, not DPW Superintendent Robert Perry, is overseeing that project. One wonders if they even speak to one another, or if Robert Perry ever reaches out to Peter to let him know what is going on at DPW.

This morning, I emailed pictures of the dumped material to Jamie at DEC, and here is the response I received from him after he contacted someone at City Hall, presumably Robert Perry: The City claimed to be unaware of the current condition of the area but promised to get the fill removed by next week. I've asked for confirmation when this is completed."

The problem-filled Washington Street lot is located, of course, directly across the street from the offices of the temporary City Hall, inside the Central Fire Station. Anyone standing outside the front doors of the temporary City Hall can see the freshly dumped piles of fill and debris across the street. Since neither the unpaid Peter Bujanow (who does not live in Hudson) nor Robert Perry (annual salary of over $115,000) has an office inside any City Hall, temporary or permanent, I guess they should both be pardoned for their lack of regard to what the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation told Hudson DPW (via Robert Perry) that they must not allow to happen in the lot.

This begs the question: Is Robert Perry paying any attention to what he was told by DEC that his department must do in the lot? The next step in repairing Mr. Perry's mistake last year of allowing the lot to be overfilled with all sorts of crap should be for DPW to hire a contractor to do a whole lot of digging and improvements there. And the bills will continue to pile up. And there will continue to be no mention (or pictures) of the situation at the lot by Mr. Perry during any of his monthly common council meeting reports. And none of the council members will ask him to explain what happened in the lot in March, what is going on there now and what his plans are for the lot, either. No problems, people, there's nothing important to see here -- everything is just fine! It's the ho hum business as usual at DPW.