One person -- even a mayoral candidate -- can purchase two $250 municipal parking permits from the Hudson City Clerk's Office at the beginning of the year so that they can leave both of their vehicles unmoved for the entire year while parked in metered parking spaces in a municipal parking lot, the owner even being given permission by the city to sleep in one of the vehicles, possibly both of them if necessary. Vehicles that are unable to be driven can be left parked in a municipal parking lot surrounded by, topped with and full of so much junk that not only is the junk on the dashboard blocking any view through the windshield, but the driver's seat is completely inaccessible. (Be careful if you open any doors!) A vehicle with a flat tire for months. An old and possibly broken-down van dropping chips of rusted metal on the ground while the owner (and hoarder) sleeps inside.
Where on earth in the year 2025 besides here in Hudson is this deemed acceptable and in the best interest of residents? These two vehicles -- owned by ONE PERSON! -- represent the complete failures of Kamal Johnson and the people he chose to surround himself with to supposedly make Hudson a better place to live and visit. I think he has made things worse. Need convincing? Just go wander around the city's parking lot behind City Hall, the building inside which Kamal Johnson has been occupying the Mayor's Office for the past six years. Just occupying... and doing absolutely nothing more than that. Kinda like the vehicles shown in these pictures: occupying, dispiriting, damaging, unhelpful and unwelcome.
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| And if it starts to leak oil? |
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| And when all 4 tires go flat? |
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| The long board on top has 2 inches of a wood screw sticking out of it |
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| It's okay, the owner has a permit! |
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| It might as well say DO NOT DISTURB |
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| And if it starts to leak oil? |
Early this year, when Jen Belton and her merry band of parking experts who made up the Parking Study Committee were in the process of doing away with the city's annual $1,000 Amtrak lot parking permits, she announced that the $250 downtown municipal lot parking permits would also become a thing of the past. Everyone, not just Amtrak commuters, would "pay their fair share" to park in the city, she announced. Fair is fair, right? Well, it sure is a good thing someone thought better of Jen Belton's idea, isn't it? We're all better off with the $250 municipal parking permits than without them, aren't we?
A few years ago, in classic Hudson fashion, the year-round alternate side overnight parking rule in the City Hall municipal parking lot was inexplicably eliminated (yes, there had been an overnight parking rule in the lot). The rule allowed DPW to efficiently and effectively sweep the lot over the course of two days after snowfall without vehicles being in the way; it brought in revenue in the form of $15 overnight wrong side parking tickets; and perhaps most importantly of all, it kept vehicle owners from parking their vehicles in the lot for up to 12 months (at which time they can apply for another permit), especially the ugliest of ugly and inoperable vehicles owned by hoarders, including those that are slept in, have flat tires, and rust chips accumulating around them.
A few years ago at an informal council meeting, months after the City Hall lot's helpful and revenue-producing overnight parking rule was eliminated and the two signs in the lot explaining the rule were removed, I asked Rob Perry if he knew why the city decided to do this. He explained (which he had not done previously at a meeting!) that it had been done -- with the help of "the mayor and the police commissioner"-- so that future tenants of Galvan's apartment building, the Depot Lofts, 3 blocks away on 7th Street, as well as tenants and guest of other developments on the way, had a place to park overnight in the lot without being ticketed. Poor Galvan, they needed some sweet, free, off-street parking spaces blocks from their hotel on 4th Street and their apartment building on 7th Street. The city's largest and busiest parking lot, directly behind Kamal Jonson's City Hall, was the ideal choice, at least in Galvan's, Rob Perry's, Shane Bower's and Kamal Johnson's minds. But no one associated with those developments has or will be parking in the lot. (Galvan built their own parking lot for their tenants just one block away from the Depot Lofts!)
Instead, in the City Hall lot, we get lovely, unmovable and unticketable gifts from the Mayor's Office just a few hundred feet away, precisely what the city's municipal parking lot permits were designed to gift us for months and years at a time. Like this gift that is only missing brightly colored wrapping paper, flashy ribbon and a large red bow on top so that nobody can say they didn't notice it. Hell, no one is able to drive the fucking thing out of the lot anyway, so why not completely cover it in something a bit more cheerful? I'm sure Kamal Johnson would approve of it on his way out of City Hall!
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| Whatever that thing on the ground is, it has been there for at least three weeks. Is this worth a $250 permit? Is this what a parking lot permit was designed to permit? |
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