This past Friday at 2:30 in the afternoon, I saw a DPW dump truck on Park Place take a turn up Prison Alley. What do you suppose the two paid DPW employees ($20/hour at least) inside the truck were up to besides driving and riding? Were they looking for potholes to fill? No. How about transporting snow from the three mounds of the white stuff that DPW had piled up 3 days earlier in the City Hall parking lot? No, they were not told to deal with that. (One week later, those three piles are still inexplicably there, untouched, occupying parking spaces and waiting to be taken elsewhere.) Were the two fellas in the diesel-guzzling vehicle looking for random piles of illegally dumped bulk trash to take to the county transfer station? No, not that either.
What the DPW workers were doing -- and were likely told to do by DPW foreman Frank Rogers -- on a frigid day a few days following 4 inches of snow was nothing short of unbelievable. And it was a stark reminder and representation of the budget troubles looming over City Hall. It always comes back to DPW, doesn't it?
On December 5th, 2025, city taxpayers were paying two DPW workers to scour the city's snowy and icy alleys and streets to collect large brown paper bags full of yard waste. You know, like grass clippings, twigs and fallen leaves! I could see the few bags in the back that they had already collected, and there was room for more of them. Maybe 15 more at most. City taxpayers, of course, also paid for the gallons of diesel fuel needed to perform this "free" city service. We all paid for the carbon emissions coming from the vehicle's tailpipe, too. On December 5th, 4 days after the first significant snowfall of the season, DPW was collecting what full yard waste bags they could find scattered around the city! When the truck was full of yard waste bags or there were no more yard waste bags to collect (how many hours did that take?), they then drove the DPW diesel guzzler vehicle along snowy streets to the county transfer station just outside of Hudson where they dropped off their collected bags of residential yard waste. (Whether they were charged to dispose of them, I do not know.)
There should be no collection of residential yard waste at all in the City of Hudson anymore until tax revenue is no longer its sole source of funding. If the good folks in City Hall having trouble balancing the books know what is good for us, this "free" service to certain households (how many?) should end now. Or, if it must continue, residents choosing to put their yard waste out to be collected by DPW should have to pay for the service. Collecting and disposing of those bags is not cheap (especially if the County Solid Waste Department is charging us to drop them off), not all residents put out yard waste for DPW, and yet we all pay for the service through a portion of property taxes that make their way to the DPW budget every year. All taxpayers, whether they have a yard or not, are funding the DPW collection of yard waste from residents who choose to take advantage of this "free" city service by putting out as much yard waste as they like. If you never have yard waste to collect; if you don't have a yard or trees; if you don't have yard waste to collect in your tiny yard; if you compost your yard waste yourself or you take it to a composting facility, a portion of your taxes are paying for the people who do choose to have DPW collect their yard waste. This is some sort of regressive tax, isn't it? It's unfair and unbalanced, and it's unnecessary, isn't it? And it makes no sense, does it? Certainly not in these financially challenging times. If the city sells blue bags to allow residents to pay for garbage collection, why isn't it doing the same for yard waste collection? It's all waste, and it needs to be paid for outside of taxes. Sorry! Times change!
During last night's council meeting, Rob Perry, for the first time in a year or two, explained in great detail why the city was in the blue garbage bag business (and, of course, why the vending machine selling the bags in front of city hall was necessary). The idea is simple and obvious, and there should be no reason for Perry to explain it again: the profits from sales of the bags cover the cost of the DPW truck and trash crew collecting the bags two days a week and driving them over the scale at the local garbage dump. Perry said, "We haul the blue bags to the County transfer station on Newman Road. They charge us in real money for everything that goes over the scale. We get charged 128 dollars a ton for garbage." Later, he added, "If we don't sell the blue bags, we have $100,000 worth of revenue that disappears... so we'd have to raise taxes by $100,000." Perry was implying that the city needs to have a source of funding outside of taxes for blue bag garbage disposal.
Then Perry mentioned something interesting about DPW's collection of recycling, a service that, like garbage collection, not all homeowners choose to use (many use private haulers for their garbage and recycling disposal needs). "We get charged 90 dollars a ton for recycling. We do have a revenue source for garbage; we do not have a revenue source for recycling. It's a (cost center)." (I'm unsure exactly what he said or meant at the end.) Perry was implying that DPW's handling of residential (and commercial) recycling is fully paid for by tax revenue and that we do not need a source of funding outside of taxes for recycling disposal. I'm sorry, but this is nuts! Perry did not mention how much recycling collection and disposal costs the city each year (including fuel, wear and tear on the truck, wages, tipping fees, etc.), and I don't think he ever has. He should. Just the diesel fuel costs for the truck alone have got to be astronomical.
Up until 5 or 6 years ago, the Columbia County Solid Waste Department did not charge anyone, including DPW, to drop off recycling at their transfer station on Newman Road in Greenport. Excluding the cost to taxpayers of recycling collection by DPW (getting the stuff in a truck and to the transfer station), recycling was free. But the cost to recycle continues to get more costly for City Hall and taxpayers because the city has no source of funding for recycling like it does for garbage collection via the sale of the blue bags. Even still, Rob Perry has never offered any ideas to create a revenue source for the collection of recycling, an expense to DPW, City Hall and taxpayers that is essentially the same cost as garbage collection is. Perry just occasionally whines about it, as he did last night.
Budget woes or not, the city needs to cease providing "free" recycling collection to residents who choose it until it comes up with a direct source of funding to continue to collect and haul our tin cans, bottles and boxes to the county transfer station twice a week to be charged $90 per ton for it. It's the fiscally responsible, sensible and fair thing to do. Not everyone puts out recycling for DPW to collect, yet every city taxpayer is paying their share for that city service. We can't keep going on as if this doesn't matter. The city needs to start behaving fiscally responsible and smart about city services, including figuring out a way to fund recycling collection and yard waste collection the same way it figured out how to fund garbage collection. Selling two sizes of large brown paper bags -- one for yard waste and one for recycling -- might be a start. There's plenty of room for another vending machine or two in front of City Hall, and Perry would love to see more of them there.
Until a funding source other than higher and higher property taxes is found for the "free" DPW services of recycling collection and yard waste collection that not every household takes advantage of, both services should both be shelved. We simply can't afford it anymore. City Hall can't afford it anymore! These services can't be "free" anymore! Drive your waste to the County transfer station yourself if you want to recycle and compost so badly! Plenty of Hudson residents do this already. Better yet, cut back on creating so much waste in the first place. Of course, to continue to recycle and compost will cost you in the wallet, as it should, because your neighbors' tax dollars won't help you pay to have it done for you anymore. Even Rob Perry might agree with that approach, though he would never say so in public. Taxes are too high for him to tell residents, "Sorry, folks, we can't take your recycling and yard waste away for free anymore." And therein lies the problem. Nothing will change, and City Hall will continue to behave wastefully, irresponsibly and unbalanced as budgets and taxes continue to rise to meet the occasion.
Or maybe Joe Ferris will rise to the occasion and finally bring some common $ens$e to City Hall.
A city service spiraled out of control, affecting the DPW budget
and raising taxes to cover the shortfalls.
Get it while the gettin' is good!
Many restaurants and other food businesses in town, though not all, put out all their recycling -- primarily corrugated boxes -- for DPW to remove while paying a private trash hauler to service a dumpster for their garbage. This includes Kitty's and Baba Louie's; they have chosen to get free recycling from the city (thanks to city taxpayers) instead of paying their trash hauler for a recycling dumpster. Olde Hudson Market does the same, putting out a RIDICULOUS amount of unflattened boxes (code violation) not at the side of the alley (code violation) well before Monday pickup (code violation) for DPW to take away every week. And DPW does it. Every week, no questions asked, no code violation tickets issued, with Rob Perry essentially telling them and all the other participating eating establishments, "No problem. Put out as many boxes as you like, we'll remove all of them for you. It's practically free! Don't be foolish enough to pay your trash hauler to do it when we will do it for free. And don't bother flattening your boxes. We got it."
Is this the equivalent of ten households' worth of recycling?
Or is it closer to twenty? Thirty? Who pays for this?
One week later, still not removed. Two other piles
in the city's largest parking lot also await removal. Gotta
get to them yard waste bags first!
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