In Lieu of This Month's Parking Study Committee Meeting...

 

...at least we got this spray-painted circle in the City Hall parking lot.  Now that's what I call progress!

It seems that is the spot where a $10,000 parking kiosk, or a sign directing drivers to one, may one day be located.   It's difficult to say when that may happen (if ever) since this month's PARKING STUDY COMMITTEE meeting was cancelled. By the time the committee meets again on July 22nd (if that meeting's not cancelled), the $160,000 worth of kiosks will have been gathering dust in a DPW shed on Dock Street for over five and a half months.  As someone recently pointed out to me, the warranty on those 16 kiosks is also being wasted while they sit in storage waiting to be put in the ground, begin to be useful to visitors and residents alike, and start raking in the dough we are missing out on because of the "TYRANNY OF THE QUARTER" thanks to those annoying parking meters that are so out of style and frowned upon.

Parking Study Committee member and all around bon vivant, Tom Depietro, made it clear on several occasions over the past 2 years or more that all of the city's parking meters had to go, often citing the laughable quoted line above.  He (and Jen Belton) so loved to blame the meters and quarters for the city's parking revenue shortcomings.  A few days ago, however, the residents of Hudson told Tom in no uncertain terms that he had to go.  In a bit of poetic injustice, it's quite possible that Tom Depietro will be gone from City Hall before any of his despised parking meters are gone from the parking lot behind his office on the second floor. 

And it looks as though Parking Study Committee head Jen Belton will be back next year to start her second term as a 2nd ward council member.  But, golly, if the vote count holds up, she didn't exactly get a ringing endorsement from the people of her own ward.  And if the vote recount by hand shows she lost to Alexis Keith, well, who is going to take her place heading the committee to see that those spray-painted circles in and around our parking lots actually produce something useful and finally rid Hudson of the TYRANNY OF THE QUARTER?

WE'RE WAITING!