A Sinkhole Of Another Sort, Of City Hall's Own Making

My June 1st Hudseen article focused on a trash receptacle left in the street for a few days in front of 605 State Street.  The trouble then was a combination of 3 things:  the trash hauler not placing the empty container back on the sidewalk where they found it; the property owner not removing it from the street back to their property; and, of course, the City of Hudson not caring one way or the other about any of it.  Unsurprisingly, the nonsense and quality of life issues regarding the trash receptacle at 605 State continue. 

The private trash hauler by the name of County Waste services their plastic household receptacles in Hudson, including State Street, on Tuesday mornings.  They did so last week and this week.  This past Tuesday, I watched as a County Waste trash truck driver emptied my neighbor's 2 trash receptacles with the hydraulic-powered articulated arm on the side of the truck.  The arm reached out twice between two parked cars to grab each of the receptacles from the sidewalk (at the curb), emptied them, and left both of the receptacles in the street between the two parked cars.  The driver shrugged and moved on when I pointed out his failure to him.  (Pardon the digression). 

Last Thursday afternoon, I noticed the infamous 605 State Street County Waste trash receptacle standing in the sidewalk.  The following day it was still there, now with the lid up and garbage bags visible.  The receptacle had obviously been left on the sidewalk since last Tuesday when it was emptied, and garbage continually placed inside.  So convenient!  On Saturday morning at 9:30, I took a picture of the receptacle.  Here is that picture, as well as a picture of the situation every day since then, including today, exactly one week since I first noticed the receptacle on the sidewalk at the curb, in chronological order.

Saturday

Sunday

Monday (sidewalk view)

Monday (street view)

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Why would a homeowner do this, or allow their tenants to do this? The simple answer is because they are able to. The City of Hudson doesn't seem to care about this quality-of-life issue, and Craig Haigh likely has no time, interest or resources to deal with a code violation such as this. Even if Craig were asked to deal with it, I'm pretty sure his response would be something along these lines: "It's a private trash hauler, there's nothing we can do about it," even though it is a clear code violation.  So, the trash receptacle remains on the sidewalk and eventually we become inured to it.  It's part of the cityscape, and it's just the way things are.  Pretty soon, no one bothers calling the city about any blatant code violations.

I could very easily see a scenario like the following play out:  A neighbor, fed up with seeing the trash receptacle full of garbage in the sidewalk day after day and week after week, decides to move it off of the sidewalk and place it on the property, out of sight, where the garbage is coming from and where the receptacle belongs.  The homeowner notices this happening, comes outside, and the next thing you know someone has a knife in their neck or they hit their head on the pavement so hard after being punched that they go into a coma and eventually die.  Stranger, more f'd up things have happened because of irresponsible, sloppy neighbors and a gross lack of proper code enforcement.  

The Hudson City Code exists for a number of reasons, some (or all) of which Hudson City Hall seems not to comprehend:  to remove persistent quality of life issues; to prevent quality of life issues from arising in the first place; to keep our city looking decent; and equally critical, to prevent disputes between neighbors.  A Code Enforcement Office in a city of 6,000 with a budget of well below $200,000 and just one full-time officer is not just bizarre.  It's frightening. 

Here is the June 1st article about the troublesome trash receptacle at 605 State: bad actors

For at least the past few years, at least one person living at 11 South 6th Street (possibly even the salon located there) has felt free to put out all sorts of garbage and recycling in the alley on any day of the week.  Yesterday, or possibly today, they put out a blue city garbage bag, placing it next to several other white bags of garbage that have been there in the alley for at least one week.  That blue bag will not be picked up by DPW for another 4 days.  This is a clear code violation, but the city allows it to happen because whoever is doing it week after week and month after month has not been told by the city to stop doing it.  So, the blue bags of garbage appear any day of the week. 

Then the white bags of garbage appear that DPW is not supposed to touch BECAUSE THOSE BAGS OF GARBAGE ARE A CODE VIOLATION.  The recycling is put out in clear or white bags, which is also a code violation.  DPW removes them anyway.  And on and on it goes as if it didn't matter that someone puts their waste out in whatever form they like, whenever they like.  Nobody tells them to stop it and no one issues fines for the violations, so why would they stop?  Eventually their garbage disappears - what the hell do they care who takes it away free of charge?  This happens up and down all of our alleys.  It's like a contagion.  

Who is the property owner hoping
will remove their blue bags not purchased
from the city? (600 block Cherry Alley today)

A neighbor, noticing what is going on down the alley, does the same thing, putting blue bags out when they are not supposed to be put out. But these are not blue city bags -- there is no city logo on them. Who is supposed to remove those bags of trash? Not DPW -- they are only supposed to touch city blue bags. Everything else is a CODE VIOLATION! Monkey see, monkey do.

When enough bags of trash and loose garbage accumulate at the corner of 6th Street and Cherry Alley, the DPW garbage and recycling crew removes it, having grown tired of seeing it so often on their daily rounds.  No one from DPW or Code Enforcment bothers knocking on the door or opening the trash or recycling bags to determine who is placing so much waste in the alley so consistently and in such violation of our code, creating a quality-of-life issue that we can all do without and that is EASILY PREVENTABLE.  

The easier approach for City Hall, apparently, is to do nothing but let the violators continue to violate, eventually removing their trash for them at no cost to the tenant or property owner and with DPW's work and the cost of disposal at the dump being subsidized by, of course, taxpayers.  This is completely antithetical to the purpose of the city's blue bag garbage program.  Everyone is supposed to pay for their own garbage removal, either through the city's blue bag program, by hiring a private hauler, or by driving your trash to a county transfer station.  Anything else is a code violation and not to be touched by DPW. It's really quite simple if you want it to be.

Our mayor gets paid $75,000 a year.  I'm thinking that he is either blind or just addicted to social media and not interested in the reality that surrounds him, nor the amount of money his city wastes day in and day out.  As for Robert Perry, our DPW Superintendent in the Crocs (I saw him today on Union Street shod in them)?  He is paid way too much money to go anywhere near a stinky bag of garbage that has been in an alley for a week or two, ripped open by vermin and covered in flies and maggots.  That job is for someone else.  Or, more accurately, no one at all!

We need a competent city manager, or we continue down this sinkhole until we lack the money to dig ourselves out.