Sound Familiar?

Watch your step for the next 5 months!

Because our DPW Superintendent allowed National Grid's gas line replacement project in Hudson to begin so late in the year, we are stuck with ugly and bumpy sidewalks along 3 blocks of Warren Street and some side streets for at least the next 4, possibly 5, months. Some sections of the lovely lumpy black asphalt sidewalks are not just unsmooth, they are often raised AND some have depressions in them requiring cones to keep people from stepping in them and winding up losing a few teeth. When the snow and ice finally arrive, it will be even more challenging for residents and visitors to walk safely along our downtown business district sidewalks.

If asked, Rob Perry would likely claim that he had no other option but to allow National Grid to start their work when they wanted to.  This is complete bullshit.  This project was not started because of some sort of emergency due to leaking gas lines.  It is merely part of a statewide effort from the Department of Public Service to get all gas utilities to upgrade their lines from old metal pipes to new plastic ones.  Mr. Perry did not have to agree, or suggest, that National Grid begin their extensive work so late in the year, allowing cold weather to disrupt and delay work (not to mention disrupting and removing parking on Warren Street during the one heavy shopping month that many businesses rely on to stay alive!). 

Take the Village of Saugerties, for example, which had gas lines replaced along several of its streets last year.  Their gas provider, Central Hudson, began their gas line replacement project in late May and finished in September, usually a good time of the year to do repaving.  Here in Hudson?  Robert Perry gave the okay for National Grid to start digging up our streets in August and made no mention of that plan at any public meetings.  (Green, Columbia, South 3rd, and Warren are all part of the project.)  Now, 4 months later in mid-December, National Grid's contractor still hasn't finished its pipe work on Warren Street, and State Street's driving surface and its sidewalks are an absolute, insulting mess thanks to National Grid's own work.  According to Mr. Perry, the final repaving of all the streets involved in the project won't be completed until "the spring."  Saugerties wisely had their work started in the late spring and it was completely finished in the fall.  Our work began in late summer and might end in the spring, with months of cold weather keeping our sidewalks and streets untouched, ugly and unsafe.  Genius, absolute genius!  

I'm thinking that if there were a competent city manager at Hudson City Hall instead of a distracted, ineffective and overpaid mayor, Mr. Perry's and National Grid's plan fort this project would have been scuttled.  "Sorry, starting a project of this scope in September is just dumb and unacceptable.  Come back and speak to me early next year after the snow melts!"  Of course, this assumes that a city manager would have known about Mr. Perry's and National Grid's intentions in the first place.  Given that Perry never mentioned anything about this project to the council or the public before it began, one wonders if he even mentioned it to the mayor.  In Saugerties, they had an entire page on their website devoted to every detail of the project, posted before the project began and updated regularly.  There were also community meetings held by the gas supplier ahead of the project.  Here in Hudson?  Nothing but shit for sidewalks.  

Sound familiar?

State Street sidewalk this past Saturday,
8 months after the block-long project began!