Introducing The Real Mayor of Hudson!

There's so much to say about this issue, so I will try my best to keep it short.  It's difficult to think this is happening in the year 2024, but it is, and the story needs to be told.

Our mayor's personal vehicle was issued seven parking tickets last year, 4 for parking on the wrong side of Union Street overnight and 3 for meter violations on Warren Street during the week.  He didn't pay for a single one of those 7 tickets. 

That's right, our mayor feels that parking tickets do not apply to him, even those tickets issued to his Lexus while he is asleep.  What a clueless, hypocritical jerk we have for a mayor.

Let's remember that last year's failed so-called parking ticket amnesty program was Kamal Johnson's idea to "give back to the community."  That's what he said.  What a slimeball. 

Kamal Johnson's seven parking tickets from 2023. 
Not one of them was paid for.

So far this year, Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson's personal vehicle has only been issued one parking ticket, it also being issued when he was likely asleep in his apartment on Union Street.  That $15 WRONG SIDE PARKING ticket was also immediately VOIDED, of course.  Not appealed and VOIDED.  Just VOIDED.

Just one ticket in 2024 so far.  It, too, was VOIDED.

Of the 8 parking tickets issued to the Lexus with plates JJC 6936 that Kamal Johnson did not have to pay for - totaling $140 -- one of them sticks out. That would be the highest priced ticket, which was issued in October of last year, it being the only one that was DISMISSED rather than VOIDED. That METER VIOLATION ticket was the one that allowed HUDseen to find out what an entitled slimeball our mayor is.  It is a ticket that Kamal Johnson probably regrets forgetting about.

The Lexus may be new, but the old sign for 
the mayor's parking space just reeks of 
"business as usual."

You see, on August 7th, as I was passing through the City Hall parking lot, I noticed Kamal's car parked in one of his two parking spaces behind City Hall.  Just for fun, I decided to run his license plate number through the city's online parking ticket portal to see if our mayor had any unpaid parking tickets.  Why not? 

And sure enough, I saw that Kamal Johnson, the so-called mayor of Hudson, NY, had failed to pay (or get voided) a $10 METER VIOLATION ticket issued to his Lexus on Warren Street on October 24th.  The mayor of Hudson, presiding over the city he grew up in and supposedly loves, had an outstanding $45 meter violation ticket for over 225 days!  Well, I thought, let's go see how he reacts to this interesting revelation.

Minutes later in his office, I asked Kamal Johnson if he had any comment about his well-overdue parking ticket for a blog article that I was planning on writing.

"I'm busy, please leave," was all our mayor could say.

The ticket information on the portal vanished within a half hour, meaning Kamal's ticket was no longer outstanding, having been paid for or voided. (He worked quickly, probably running down the stairs to the Clerk's office after I left!)  I then filed a FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW request for all of the parking tickets issued to the Mayor's Lexus.  Within a week I had the two documents above which show all the tickets issued to the Mayor's Lexus since the first day of 2023.  That well-overdue $45 parking meter violation ticket from October that our mayor had forgotten about had been DISMISSED rather than paid for.

It turns out that the city's former problematic parking ticket vendor used the term VOIDED to indicate any tickets that had been undone by appeal or otherwise.   The new parking ticket vendor only uses the term DISMISSED to indicate the same, proving that Kamal's ticket from October was dropped very recently.  That is the vendor who, as Sunday's article pointed out, might allow the city to recoup unpaid tickets and resume the booting of vehicles.  Unless of course, that vehicle is a dark blue Lexus withe the NY plates JJC 6936 that is owned by the so-called mayor of Hudson NY.  HPD can issue all the tickets they feel like issuing to the mayor's car and the city will never collect one penny from those tickets, no matter what parking ticket vendor the city is working with.  HPD will just be wasting their time and effort (and paper) as long as Kamal Johnson considers himself the King of Hudson, above the rest of us schmucks who are responsible, smart and mature enough to pay our parking tickets or appeal them with good reason.  Even, and especially, those tickets our cars are issued while we are asleep.  Because adults who know they've made a mistake usually take responsibility for that mistake.  Slimeballs, the entitled and the immature do not.  They scheme to get out of owning up to their mistakes.  All the time! 

It's interesting to note that the Common Council recently voted to do away with the Amtrak lot permit system because, according to parking wizards Tom Depietro and Jen Belton, those commuters who paid one thousand dollars every year to the city weren't "paying their fair share."  Well, when a mayor doesn't pay the "fair share" of his own parking tickets over and over, shouldn't he be sacked, too?  Otherwise, how else will our man-child mayor learn that what he is doing is wrong, unethical, unacceptable and a horrible example to set?  How will he ever grow up and become a responsible man if he doesn't learn from his mistakes?  And how will Hudson ever achieve anything resembling a city to be proud of?

Now I know why our mayor hasn't bothered to hold one State of the City meeting in over 4 years to let us all know how things are going in City Hall and maybe even take some questions from the public.  He's not up to the task of being a responsible mayor, let alone an adult.  And, of course, someone might ask him whether or not he pays parking tickets issued to his car and if he puts quarters in the meters when he parks on Warren Street.  How would he respond without sounding like a buffoon or a liar?

Kamal Johnson, the Mayor of Hudson, the guy who just doesn't seem to understand right from wrong.  What other rules, written or implied, do you suppose he feels do not apply to him?  All of them, or just some of them?