No Problem, I'll Just Walk Where The Trucks Are Rolling By!

Columbia Street is not only our vexing truck route, but also a place where pedestrians can be made to feel especially ignored and unwelcome, even non-existent.  Here is just one example of many.

In early July, the contractor occasionally working on the former church at the intersection of 6th & Columbia (known as 21 N. 6th) was issued a sidewalk permit by DPW to block the sidewalk with a dumpster.  They paid $25 for the permit which has no expiration date.  Why no expiration date?  Because early last year, DPW Superintendent Robert Perry modified the look, wording and fee structure of the important sidewalk permit, no longer requiring contractors and property owners to renew the permit every two weeks for another $25 to continue blocking a sidewalk.  Instead, it's now Pay One Price to block the sidewalk for as long as anyone needs or wants to.  2 weeks?  22 weeks?  One permit, one price!  It is one of the stupidest, most inexplicable things I have come across in City Hall recently.  Though our mayor may find this acceptable, a competent city manager would not.

It appears (though I could be wrong) that Mr. Perry did not get the authorization to do away with the two-week duration of his sidewalk permit.  Perhaps he didn't need approval from anyone to make the change, including the Common Council, the mayor or the Treasurer, which is doubly concerning.  He may have made the change to make things easier on his clerk, keep money out of the city's coffers and in the pockets of contractors who can take their sweet time moving their obstructions from the public rights of way, also known as our sidewalks.

If 7 months equates to 210 days, it looks as though the contractor has paid an average of about 12 cents per day since July to keep a series of dumpsters on the sidewalk of the 500 block of Columbia Street.  Pretty soon the fee will drop to a dime per day.  And there appears to be no extra fee to make navigating the sidewalk as dangerous as possible for pedestrians, especially for the elderly and disabled.  Nor is there any extra fee for forcing pedestrians into or across the truck route, having to step off of one of the ugliest and most damaged curbs in the city.  Just Pay One Price and feel free to leave piles of debris, snow and ice surrounding your dumpster or machine, do your best to park your dumpster or machinery diagonally to maximize obstruction of the sidewalk, and do whatever the hell you need to do for as long as you damn well please.  No worry, there's no hurry!

The HPD Parking Permit (primarily used for dumpsters parked in the street, where they belong) requires a renewal fee after two weeks and it requires permittees to post their permit "in public for inspection."  For mysterious reasons, a DPW Sidewalk Permit requires neither of these things.

(Under the line for the date of Robert Perry's DPW Sidewalk Permit, it (poorly) reads, "This permit for excavation in Sidewalk at:" with an address to be filled in.  Further down the page, though, contractors are given 5 choices of why they need to "close a portion of the sidewalk," and not one of those choices has anything to do with excavation of the sidewalk.  Pure genius!)