Late last week, as I often do, I included the police commissioner's email address in an email to HPD and the Mayor's Office. For the first time ever for me, the commissioner's email was undeliverable; it immediately came back to me as ADDRESS NOT FOUND. It's not just that we have been without an actual Police Commissioner for 2 months, but it's possible that we no longer even have an Acting Police Commissioner at HPD, a position that is unpaid and filled by the mayor through an appointment. Shane Bower, a former HPD cop and non-Hudson (Gallatin, I believe) resident, resigned from his position in early October. On his way out the door -- if he was even inside the door -- he said that the work he had been tasked to do was done and that the Hudson Police Department "no longer needs a commissioner." Shane's predecessor, doubling as the Police Chief of Chatham, nearly went to jail for fraud and larceny, resigning in disgrace from both positions after just 9 months of doing nothing for the City of Hudson and stealing money from Chatham. He was not caught stealing money from us, which is not to say he wasn't stealing money from us. Who knows? Prior to that fraudster jerk, we were without a police commissioner for about two years, and no one seemed to notice. You could write a book about all this, but no one would believe it could be true. Ditto for what follows below.
During and after David Miller's HPD report to the council one week ago, he mentioned the word kiosks once: "We're going to kiosks and digital" was all he had to say. (Is that the extent of the plan?) Without giving any indication as to when the parking kiosks (or how many) would make their appearance on Warren Street and its side streets, Miller assured the council members that all of the parking meters would be removed this month. Of course, removing the meters is the easiest and quickest aspect of the kiosk project. In response to a question from arguably the most useless council member of all, Dewan Sarowar -- who appeared to not know that every parking meter had already been removed from the city's four parking lots -- Miller reiterated that parking enforcers were going to be removing all of the on-street meters during the month of December. He added, "It's a lot of work. And DPW has to take the poles out." Miller was referring to the hundreds of meter-less parking meter poles embedded in concrete on just about every downtown sidewalk in the commercial district and in the city's four parking lots (there are at least 50 of the poles still standing in the City Hall lot alone!). We'd be lucky if DPW were to complete this task by the year 2029. Jack hammer around the base of the poles, remove pole with concrete ball stuck to the bottom, fill hole with concrete. On to the next pole.
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| Some denuded poles were given orange caution tape but most were not. |
The questions that no council member thought to ask Captain Commissioner Miller last week but should have are the following:
"Is the council to understand that it is your goal and plan to have all of the necessary kiosks in place to be collecting parking revenue along both sides of the 9 blocks of Warren, upper Columbia and certain side streets by January 5th?
Will all of the necessary kiosks be in the ground 30 days from now, or just some of them? How many of the kiosks do you hope to have in the ground come January 5th?
Do you have a time schedule for the entire project that is on paper that you can offer us?
Is this ambitious project being handled by HPD or the Parking Bureau, or both? Are you supervising the project?
If not you, who is the supervisor and contact person should council members or residents have any questions or concerns about the progress of the project?
How many kiosks are you planning on installing, how many kiosks does the city own right now, who is going to perform the task of installing them, when will the task begin, and how long do you foresee the task of installing all of the kiosks and all of the signage from beginning to end?
Are we talking weeks or months? Years?
There won't be any free parking anywhere on Warren Street and its side streets after January 4th, will there be?
Beginning January 5th, everyone parking downtown will be paying to park, and they will all clearly know their payment options and where to find a kiosk, won't they? Isn't that the plan?
By January 5th, one month from now, will DPW have removed all of the parking meter poles that won't or don't have kiosk signs on them, or is that going to wait until after all the kiosks are installed?
Are you hoping that the hundreds of empty meter poles will all be removed from sidewalks before the kiosks are installed, will it happen at the same time, or will the poles be removed after the kiosks have been installed?
Will DPW be installing the kiosks as well, or is someone else from outside of Hudson handling this formidable task?
Also, Captain Miller, whose idea was it to schedule this project in the dead of winter?
What if we get a foot or two of snow on January 4th and it all turns to ice the next day, as is entirely possible?
How can anyone possibly be expected to properly install dozens of very expensive, high-tech parking kiosks on sidewalks in the months of December, January and February even if there is no snow on the ground?
Do you even know where each kiosk will be installed in the concrete? Does DPW know where each one will go? Does anyone on this council know?
How many parking kiosks can DPW (or whoever installs them) install in one 8-hour workday?
How can you possibly expect (and how can we expect you) to get this project completed by early January, the date that you announced when, essentially, "all of Warren Street would become metered parking"? Doesn't that imply that all of the necessary kiosks will be installed by then?
How can all of Warren Street's parking spaces be "metered" if there aren't any kiosks to be found anywhere?
Why is no one from the Parking Bureau presenting information to the council about this unprecedented, enormous and transformative project?
Has anyone done any number crunching to determine how much this project is going to cost city taxpayers to make it happen, do it right and sustain it in perpetuity? Why has no one offered us any estimated costs related to this project? Does our CFO, Heather Campbell, have an idea of the project's total cost by year, including labor, signs, kiosks, service fees, orange tape, kiosk receipt paper and everything else?
Is this a HPD project or a Parking Bureau project, or both?
Why is HPD's second in charge informing us primarily about parking meters but not anything about the parking kiosks replacing them?
And, finally, Captain Miller, how much time has the kiosk project taken away from your duties related to law enforcement that you have sworn to uphold? How much time do you see spending on it in the future? Is this enormous project at all hindering HPD's ability to keep the residents of Hudson safe?"
I was recently told by a city worker that HPD's longtime Police Clerk, Doreen Danforth, who may also be handling the duties of Parking Bureau Supervisor, is in charge of the kiosk rollout. There hasn't been one presentation or bit of discussion from Doreen, David Miller or anyone at HPD and the Parking Bureau (the bureau is not independent of HPD) regarding the city's plans to "meter all of Warren Street" with kiosks before or after January 5th, 2026. That is, if they even have a plan. The 5th day of January falls on a Monday, exactly 20 days from today.
On the city's website, the list of CITY DEPARTMENTS includes the Parking Bureau, and the bureau has a page of its own just like all other departments. But unlike every other department's page on the site, nowhere on the Parking Bureau's page can a person's name be found. There is no indication that someone is in charge of the newly formed and relocated (to HPD) Parking Bureau. There is a general email address and phone number, of course, but no actual name of a person working there. And on the difficult-to-find CITY OFFICALS page of the city's website, every department and department head is listed, with contact info -- except, of course, for the Parking Bureau and its department head. Is it even a department? Why it called a "bureau" and not a "department." Does the Parking Bureau even exist? (According to the City Officials page, no, it does not.) Surely someone is supervising the Parking Bureau, right? Surely, someone with ample time and attention is supervising the kiosk project, right?
For that information, you'll need to head over to the webpage for the Police Department. Except that the phone number offered there to reach the person supposedly in charge of the Parking Bureau, Doreen Danforth, is not the same number found on the Parking Bureau's page. Even still, her role at the Parking Bureau is not clear: there is no title given to her position, whatever it might be.
Here's my prediction: sometime early this coming year, perhaps by July, this whole project will officially be PUT ON HOLD (for the second time) or scrapped altogether due to, among a few factors, a lack of funds to purchase the necessary parking kiosks. The Police Chief will likely make the announcement, as she did just prior to heading home for her second maternity leave this past summer when the city admitted to having purchased the wrong parking kiosks. That announcement, made by a city official, appeared only on the Hudson Police Department's Fakebook page, not on the city's website.
Remember (and try not to laugh or cry): 20 days from today, anyone parking in downtown Hudson, including along the entire 9 blocks of Warren Street (!), will be paying to occupy a "parallel parking" space through the use of a parking kiosk, not a parking meter! Where are all those dozens of $9,000 kiosks anyway, and will they be accepting paper currency? And why is no one talking about the kiosks or asking questions about them? Does it even matter if this project bites the proverbial dust (or snow and ice)?
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