You Would Think That Someone At City Hall Would Care

Today

Some things make no sense whatsoever.

For much of the last half of 2023, the city-owned Washington Street lot at the intersection of Washington & 7th Streets was the staging ground for Mullen & Sons, the contractor for National Grid that is still working on the huge gas line replacement project in town.  Pipes, huge piles of concrete mix, a dumpster, machinery, vehicles and random stuff were stored in the lot.  When Mullen vacated the lot sometime in late November or early December, a partially shrink-wrapped pallet of 20 or more boxes was left behind in the lot, a few feet from the exit driveway for the Columbia County DSS building.  It has been such a lovely sight for the past 3 months for anyone walking or driving past it, and it's only gotten lovelier with each passing day. (The DSS exit, also known as Railroad Avenue, is a popular path for residents headed to and from the back of Oakdale Park, especially dog walkers.  It is also used by many walkers as a shortcut to and from Fairview Avenue via Spring Street.)

The boxes have been rained and snowed on repeatedly, and still no one seems to want to take responsibility for the stuff.  Inside the boxes are brand new items that appear to be geared toward electrical uses on utility poles.  It's all new, packaged stuff: at least 4 boxes of streetlight lamps, heavy duty metal hardware designed for utility cables, and plenty of other unidentifiable stuff to this layperson.  The light bulbs contain mercury, and there are a few boxes containing several packages of duct seal compound.  The label on the packaging for the compound says this: "This product is known to be a 'Hazardous Chemical' as defined by the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200."  Just the type of stuff you want children to be messing with while they are out exploring the world.  

A manager at Mullen recently claimed that the pallet of boxes is not theirs, and National Grid doesn't respond to emails.  The useful hardware must have been dropped there by someone from National Grid, and I would estimate the value of all that new stuff to be at least $2,000.  It could have cost them a whole lot more.  

Mid-December 2023

National Grid is a British multinational electricity and gas utility company headquartered in London, England.  It has over 30,000 employees worldwide, with about 17,000 in the United States.  The company is responsible for Hudson's utility poles, and they replace our burned-out streetlight bulbs when they are notified about them. 

Why have, among many other perfectly good things, 4 or 5 boxes of brand-new streetlight bulbs been sitting outside on city property in a vacant dirt lot for the past 3-plus months?

No one at our temporary Hudson City Hall seems to care about the pallet of boxes across the street for the past 3-plus months either.  "Whatever," says Robert Perry, if he has noticed the lovely sight.  "Whatever," says the mayor, "I definitely don't give a crap!  No one on facebook is interested in that stuff, so I'm not either!"