The city's new, overly ambitious and transformational approach to paid parking, recently referred to as "going with kiosks and digital," by apparent (or former) Parking Bureau spokesperson and actual HPD Captain, David Miller, had been scheduled to begin tomorrow, Monday, December 5th, since Miller - serving in his brief role as Acting Police Commissioner and Acting Chief, neither of which he is any longer -- signed an official order on November 17th. But things are not looking good. In fact, there is little to nothing to see (or read) now that offers any confidence things are going smoothly or as planned. In short, things are a friggin' ugly mess with the city's plans and progress for paid parking.
While parking was free in December - against Miller's and Margaret Morris' wishes -- it was also free on Friday and yesterday, a very busy Saturday full of visitors and vehicles both in parking spaces and desperately searching for spaces up and down Warren Street. In previous years following free December parking, the 2nd day of January (if not a Sunday) would see the resumption of parking meters being filled and parking enforcers issuing ten-dollar meter violation tickets, sometimes quite a lot of them. It's not unusual on a bustling Saturday for a pair of parking enforcers to issue 120 meter violation tickets. Yesterday was bustling, but no meter violation tickets were issued. Not one. A pair of enforcers was out pounding the pavement, looking for cars parked in NO PARKING ZONES and being paid twenty dollars an hour to do so. Just as they had been doing all last month during the month of free parking that only Kamal Johnson was interested in.
120 ten-dollar parking tickets is the equivalent of at least $1,200 in city revenue. While some of those tickets will never be paid, many will be paid late with the $35 overdue fee added. 120 ten-dollar parking tickets may actually be worth closer to $1,500 in revenue. Of course, all ticket revenue stays with the Parking Bureau, so it's not like that money helps any of us live a better life here in Hudson. No ticket revenue helps fill a pothole. I digress. But let's not forget the lost revenue over the past two days that once came in the form of quarters put in meters. That revenue stream has not resumed either, not on Friday or yesterday! No quarters, no ten-dollar tickets, no kiosk payments, no app bullshit payments. Nothing. Here's a conservative estimate of all the lost revenue for the past two days while parking enforcers have been paid to "enforce" and the city twiddles its thumbs (good luck, Joe!): $3,000. But that's just the beginning of the missing dough we don't need!
Not only were there no meter tickets issued yesterday and Friday, but yesterday I didn't come across one new sign anywhere along the nine blocks of Warren and its side streets, including on top of the old now meterless meter poles, informing parkers how to pay for their space when the big parking payment scheme overhaul begins tomorrow. In other words, starting tomorrow, anyone parking along the entire nine blocks of Warren will still have no fucking idea how to pay for their space or if they are even expected to pay for it. In other words, the city is completely unprepared for "going with kiosks and digital" anytime soon. In other words, this whole post-meter scheme is already proving to be a complete and utter disgraceful money-wasting, laughable, pathetic blunder, brought to us by years of nonsense talk from council members and followed by HPD mismanagement. Three years ago, on his last day of service to the city, Ed Moore, a wiser police chief than our present one, did his best to warn the city he was saying goodbye to. His simple words: KEEP PARKING MATTERS OUT OF HPD's HANDS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! And then he said goodbye.
And wouldn't you know it; just yesterday, our police chief, just back from here second maternity leave, made an announcement on the HPD Fakebook page (and nowhere else) that anyone could have seen coming two or three years ago. "Due to unforeseen production delays... regarding signs," it says, "Parking Enforcement is anticipated to begin on Friday, January 9th, 2026. We encourage the public to use this time to familiarize themselves with the updated parking procedures and payment options." "Options"? You mean option, don't you? It's called a cell phone!
So, the free January-following-December parking (this city must have boatloads of extra spending cash!) will continue this coming week. Add another $2,000 or more to the missing revenue stream. What are we up to now (or is it down to?), at least 5 grand? Could it be 6 or 7? How much does a parking enforcer make in 7 or 8 hours getting paid $20 an hour for 5 or 6 days to do pretty much nothing? Does it even fucking matter?
What an embarrassing spectacle of an ignominious failure this whole thing is going to be. And heads should roll. The only reason that Jen Belton and Tom Depietro decided to get rid of our parking meters and rid the city of "the tyranny of the quarter" (Tom actually said this twice!) with the use of kiosks was TO INCREASE PARKING REVENUE! Nothing else besides increasing revenue. What we are witnessing now, and will continue to witness for the unforeseeable future, is the exact opposite. How much time and money do you suppose HPD is spending on figuring out how to obtain signs and where to put them while parking enforcers are walking up and down Warren Street not issuing $10 parking violation tickets because they've been told not to? How much time and energy AND MONEY are HPD employees Mishanda Franklin, David Miller and Doreen Danforth (anyone else?) spending on trying to get us into a post-meter era of high technology bullshit that they obviously can't handle and never should have taken on? What about crime? What about quality-of-life issues that have nothing to do with paid parking? Where is the common sense and who let this all happen?
Here is all you need to know about how wrong this whole project was right from the start. (Remember, HUDseen began highlighting the obvious problems over two years ago!) At the end of the August 27th, 2024, Ad Hoc Parking Study Committee meeting, member Vicky Daskaloudi asked her cohorts how many kiosks the city was planning to use. (Try not to laugh!) Tom Depietro replied, "16 altogether. 12 on Warren Street and 2 in the two lots." (Try not to laugh!) 10 of those 16 kiosks are still in storage nearly one year after being delivered to the DPW garage on Dock Street in early February, 6 were installed for the 6 parking lots, none have been installed on Warren for on-street parking, and HPD's revised plan is to have no kiosks on Warren or any other streets to replace the hundreds of on-street meters it removed last month. Parking Study committee member Dewan Sarowar (who likely lives with his wife and child(ren) in the house they co-own in Greenport) "attended" that meeting a year and a half ago while in his car. Driving, one presumes. He didn't have one word to say during the entire 25-minute, useless meeting.
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| Sorry, no more free parking for you! Read the signs! What signs? (800 block of Warren) |
There have been just two kiosks along Warren Street for the past few months, both of them meant to service the two parking lots in the 300 block. The city's latest spokesperson for parking matters, the head of our law enforcement department, Mishanda Franklin, also had this bit of information in her recent parking kiosk fiasco update on Fakebook: "At this time, no additional parking kiosks will be installed on Warren Street." Nonetheless, come this Friday, if we are to believe anything coming out of City Hall and HPD, everyone parking on Warren Street -- including in the last block and the first 3 blocks where no one has ever had to pay to park even for one minute -- will be expected to get out their phones and figure out how to pay for their parking space. That is, of course, after reading a sign on a pole telling them what to do or scanning a code on it.
Does anyone believe that our law enforcement professionals can really pull this off without first angering nearly everyone who visits the city, as well as bankrupting the city and driving our new mayor to tears?
Prediction: By September of this year, in 8 months, all of the on-street parking meters will be reinstalled or scheduled to be. Mayor Joe Ferris will somehow make it happen. Like every other parking-related misstep that has transpired in the past two years, it will have to happen.
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