A Simple Litmus Test For Our Esteemed Mayor

Welcome to Hudson!  Again and 
again and again....

I don't know about you, but for the past few years I have been wondering exactly why the award-winning "sign" found along 9G/South 3rd Street is even there if it is so difficult, if not impossible, to read while driving by.  What is Hudson City Hall trying to tell the thousands of drivers and passengers who pass by the "sign" each day headed into our fair city?  

Catching a glimpse of the "sign" at 20 or 30 mph raises all sorts of questions:  Is it an advertisement for a bowling alley in town?  Is the "sign" hoping to direct drivers to the high school?  Is Hudson known as the rusty city?  Did something exciting happen in this town in the 1980's and 90's?  Did Hudson become a ghost town recently?  What's wrong with the mayor in this town, if there even is one at City Hall?  Is it possible he or she is blind?  Are all upstate cities so sloppy?  What the hell is a "bow team" anyway?  Does Hudson have a big Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that they need to warn people about?  Is Hudson a city full of drug-addled pranksters, even in City Hall?  (There is a D.A.R.E. sign just beyond, after all!)  And last, but not least:  What happened to Hudson?

For the answers to all these important questions, it would do no good to ask them of our mayor (yes, we do have a guy that was elected as our mayor, and he sits in an office somewhere making about $35 an hour doing something).  He would likely just respond to every question with "I don't care."   It turns out that the only way to know exactly what that unreadable welcome "sign" on 9G is all about is to, somewhat appropriately, head over to the grounds of the Hudson High School.  Why didn't I think of this years ago! 

What the heck is going on here?

There, along Harry Howard Avenue and the bicycle/pedestrian path at the northern entrance to the school, you will find the same exact sign welcoming visitors and staff to the school!  Well, at least several years ago the two signs were probably identical in all regards!  But for some crazy reasons that I cannot begin to contemplate, unlike the City of Hudson's welcome "sign" on 9G, the welcome sign at the high school is completely legible and has no dark spots, peeling paint or missing letters, numbers and words anywhere on it!  How is this possible?  Was I dreaming as I actually read the sign without difficulty?  What has gotten into those people at the Hudson City School District, I wondered yesterday when I first saw their sign!  How dare they play by their own rules!  They aren't cooperating with the city -- it's just not fair!  

Anyhow, because the sign at the high school is 100 percent legible, I can confidently refer to it as a bona fide sign, with no quotation marks necessary!  No confusion, no quotation marks!  (I know an actual sign when I see one and can read it!)  Every letter is there, allowing every word to be read easily, as anyone with vision would expect of a sign.  Even the digits for the championship years are still as clear as they were when the sign went up 10 or 20 years ago.  (Hey, look, one of those years was 1989, not 1990!)  Now I get the message!  The pride of Hudson -- 3 state champ girls volleyball teams of yore!  Thank you HCSD!  But please tell me what it is that you understand, or possess, that our Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson does not?  Is it common sense?  Decency?  The ability to understand right from wrong, good from awful, and damaging from helpful, perhaps?  A sense of awareness, possibly?

If I could wave a magic wand, here is what I might do.  First, I would make the last two plastic garbage bags covering two out of service fire hydrants in the city appear on Robert Perry's office desk, wherever the hell that is.  I would make sure that they are soaking wet from rain, of course.  Then, I would switch the two bowling team signs, replacing our "sign" on 9G with the legible sign at the high school, and vice versa.  Then I would wait to see how many days it would take for students or workers at the high school to remove the sign from the ground and, presumably, disposed of it in a dumpster. 

At the same time, I would sit down with Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson and show him pictures of the two signs, asking him to point out the differences between the two.  I would try my best to be very patient with him.  I would also hope to ask him which sign belongs in a landfill and which sign is more appropriate than the other to be displayed publicly, especially at the entrance to a city with a mayor who, presumably, has a bit of self-respect, a healthy sense of pride in his city, as well as a fair amount of regard for aesthetics.

I would regard this as a litmus test of Kamal Johnson's fitness for holding the position of the Mayor of Hudson, New York, and I have no doubt that he would fail the test miserably.  All of Hudson's mayoral candidates should be tested similarly before being allowed on a ballot!  We can no longer afford to have a mayor who doesn't know how to -- or care to -- get the simplest of tasks accomplished and allow portions of our city to unnecessarily look like shit for far too long.  Certainly not for $75,000 a year.

There can be no argument with the notion
 that this person is responsible for his
administration's failure to remove the
unwelcome welcome "sign" on 9G
  for the past 4 years.

It's not a sign!  It's a secret window to view the 
inner workings of City Hall, with a special 
focus on the Mayor's Office.