Who Do You Suppose Owns The Sliver Of Property Known As 425 Warren Street? Do Rob Perry And Kamal Johnson Even Know? Do They Even Care Who Owns It?

Why, of course, 425 Warren, the strange space adjacent to Finch, is owned by The City of Hudson, as it probably has been forever.  (Except for final picture, all pictures were taken Friday morning, several days after our most recent precipitation fell from the sky.)

This is what we get from a DPW Superintendent with a $117,000-plus salary who is in charge of the following (forgive me if I've left anyone out!): 20 employees at DPW, give or take a few; 5 or more employees at the DPW Water Department; 3 or more employees at the DPW Sewer Department; 5 or 6 workers at the DPW Cemetery Department; two or three "part-time refuse bag" handlers inside City Hall; and, last but not least, his two DPW clerks found on the second floor of City Hall where Mr. Perry, according to both of those clerks, is "NEVER" to be found (and they aren't lying!).  Rob Perry -- even if he had wings, five eyeballs and two brains -- could never possibly keep on top of what all of his employees are doing, not doing OR SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. 

Did someone next door at Finch clear the path?
Surely a DPW worker wouldn't have cleared that path
on city property and left the sidewalk untouched! 

So, what do you suppose slips through the inevitable cracks that Mr. Perry can't possibly see or know about?  How about allowing a length of 16 feet of hard, thick and obscenely slick ice covering the entire width of a portion of the Warren Street sidewalk in the heart of downtown Hudson to be ignored for a week or more?  Everyone, or nearly everyone, made their sidewalks along Warren Street welcoming and no longer dangerous days ago, as they feel compelled or forced to do.  Except, that is, for one sidewalk in front of a city-owned property that our DPW Superintendent has apparently forgotten about among his myriad of head spinning responsibilities.  No surprise there.

 And if someone falls on the sidewalk covered in ice at 425 Warren (or has already) and sues the city for failing to do what it tells everyone else they must do within 24 hours of snowfall, who do you suppose would be responsible for that injury/injuries or death(s)?  What would Rob Perry say in his deposition? "I didn't know 425 Warren was city property. No one told me"?  Or would he actually offer the truth: "I forgot that 425 Warren is city property and has been for decades. I screwed up big time, and I apologize. This never should have happened, and it never will again. Now can I get back to work? I have dozens of employees scattered all over the city that I need to keep an eye on somehow right now."

In the past 5 days, how many parking enforcers 
walked over this ice but did nothing to let someone 
at HPD, Code Enforcement or DPW know about it?

This hazardous nonsense can't go on much longer without the city sinking like a stone. 

The former side entrance to the Hudson Police
Department station, sold in July of 2019.

If Craig Haigh at Code Enforcement had been made aware 
of this ice-covered sidewalk or seen it himself,
what do you suppose he would have done (or actually did)?  
Who would he have spoken to, if anyone?

Recently, I spoke with someone who knows a lot about what goes on inside City Hall. He told me that the city is dealing with "a lot of lawsuits right now." No surprise there, but you have to wonder how many of them were preventable and how many of them lead back to Rob Perry and his sprawling Department of Public Works that he supposedly oversees from somewhere outside of the (I won't say "his") DPW offices at the top of the steps on the second floor of City Hall, right around the corner and down the hall from the Mayor's Office.

What do you suppose Kamal Johnson would have to say if the city were sued due to a person or two who slipped and fell on that ice in front of a Warren Street city property a few days after snow and rain fell and they both sued the city for millions?  Absolutely nothing, probably!  And if one or both of those people died from blunt head trauma, would our so-called mayor still have nothing to say?  And what would City Attorney Andy Howard suggest to Kamal be done about the lawsuit(s)?  "We have no choice but to settle these suits as quickly as possible.  We have no defense, and we stand no chance in court either in front of a judge or jury.  Rob Perry fucked up big time. Do not let these cases go to trial -- it's a fool's errand!"  And Andy would be correct.

Who knows, perhaps earlier this week one or two people fell on that icy, sloped sidewalk in front of city-owned 425 Warren and Andy has already had that discussion with the so-called mayor.  Stranger, stupider shit like this happens all the time, doesn't it?  Yes, it does, ESPECIALLY WHEN PEOPLE ARE NOT ABLE TO, CANNOT, OR ARE UNWILLING TO PAY ATTENTION (and I'm not talking about people walking down the sidewalk along Warren Street)!!!

By 2 p.m., someone from Finch had salted the ice but not removed much of it.  The two women pictured above (one is obscured in front) walked very gingerly over the remaining loose and solid ice.  One of them slipped slightly.  The owner of Finch told me that he was certain that the adjacent property, which he referred to as a "park," was not owned by the city, but was "federal government property."

Here is a screenshot of the OWNER/SALES information for 425 Warren from the Assessments page of the Columbia County Real Property Tax Service website.  It might as well have Rob Perry's and Kamal Johnson's names in the empty Secondary Names box!