Who Can We Rely On To End This New Blight Of Plastic JUNK?

 

The people that have been recently nailing and screwing their plastic business signs to National Grid's utility poles all around town use a ladder for one reason only: to keep their signs out of the reach of anyone wanting to easily pull them down. And anyone can remove signs on poles without being arrested; they are no one's property once they are on the poles.  Unfortunately, the only solution to this new problem -- which appeared suddenly this year -- lies with Hudson City Hall.

I see this as a test for our new mayor.  Will he do nothing about the proliferation of these JUNK SIGNS and allow our downtown streets to resemble Fairview Avenue or worse?  Or will he figure out a way to not only get the present signs removed (National Grid will be no help!) but also stop them from coming back (which they will)?  Because if what everyone entering town via South 3rd Street is subjected to is acceptable to Mayor Ferris and his aide, we have a real problem in the mayor's office.  And if you think the JUNK SIGN problem is bad now, wait until the summer!  If none of the signs have made it to your neighborhood yet, they likely will soon.

Hint, Mr. Mayor:  If you want to solve this problem, your only option is to make DPW remove the signs with the use of their bucket truck.  If Rob Perry won't do it, you may have to replace him with someone who will.  But you are also going to have to talk to the city attorney and National Grid about how to prevent any more signs from appearing on NG's poles, if it's possible NG can be of any help.  Call every phone number on those signs and threaten the businesses with legal action if they continue posting them.  Get the Common Council to create an amendment to the code regarding the prohibition of such junk signs on National Grid's poles and figure out who is going to enforce the law. You have your work cut out for you.  Do something now before things get beyond ugly. 

However, I have my doubts that the mayor's office would be interested in taking on our new JUNK SIGNS.  If, as I was told by the mayor recently, the city can't do anything about a mound of snow next to a CSX crossing that has been completely blocking the sidewalk for nearly 5 weeks and forcing everyone to walk in the truck route, why should anyone think the city can or will do anything about a blight of JUNK SIGNS all over town on someone else's streetlight poles that may or may not be in the city's "jurisdiction"?

"Out of the city's jurisdiction," according to 
Mayor Ferris.  "Nothing we can do."

There has been conspicuous blight at 7th & State for 
several years, and now it seems as though it is 
permanent -- welcome, allowed and encouraged!

The longer the JUNK SIGNS stick around and the more they proliferate, the more it is crystal clear how dysfunctional and detached from reality City Hall continues to be.

Is this sign "out of the city's jurisdiction"?

Notice below the stop sign!

Any pole with an X on it is no longer National Grid's property. They have "replaced" it, and it is waiting to be removed by Verizon after they and anyone else transfer their lines to the new NG pole nearby. If there is a light on the pole, our DPW is responsible for transferring it.

The plastic JUNK signs are bad enough when they are readable (or, as above, barely readable), but that never lasts long.  They fade, they fold, then, as all plastic that is left outside does, they just start to fall to pieces.  That's when they truly begin to turn a city into a place where no one wants to live or visit.  That's when what is left of the signs cries out even louder:  This city is in the dumps and City Hall doesn't care!  Stay away!  Things will only get worse!

Already folded and unreadable, much like HPD's
plastic parking signs on meter poles they keep replacing.

Signs of American plastic trash culture everywhere!
Hudson City Hall embraces it!

I use the term JUNK SIGNS for a few reasons, the obvious one being that they are visual pollution that no community needs or wants.  They are abhorrent community killers and, at least to me, they represent the decline of civil society and the rise of a pervasive trashed modern American culture (much of it thanks to plastic crap), the last thing we need to be reminded of while taking a walk or ride around town.  Random untouchable public advertisements on disposable plastic related to garbage and dead automobiles meant for drivers of automobiles destroying the planet and helping cover it in asphalt.  Can we debase ourselves and our so-called community any more than this with these JUNK SIGNS?  They have no place in downtown Hudson!  They're presence cannot be justified or allowed! 

Also, the plastic signs -- which have been high and low on utility poles all over Columbia County for years -- come from a few businesses that have that four letter word in common on their signs: garbage ("junk") removal and ("junk") vehicle removal.  Sometimes even the phone numbers on the signs include the word JUNK.  No matter the message on them, they are all 100% JUNK! 

Of course, the JUNK SIGNS, regardless of what they are advertising or what size they are, are a traffic safety issue that I don't need to explain. (Crash your car and someone else's, call the junk car removal experts on the sign you were trying to read while not paying attention to the busy street in front of you!)  Perhaps Margaret Morris's new SAFETY Committee can take up the issue of the JUNK SIGNS that are appearing high above streets at intersections in every ward in town.  Or maybe she doesn't care about all those despicable plastic JUNK SIGNS in her first ward at the entrance to a city that is visited by people from all around the world.  Perhaps she's all for the blight.

Quick:  Hudson or Greenport?

Witnessing the proliferation of our scourge of PLASTIC JUNK SIGNS, especially the many on South 3rd Street AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CITY, I am reminded of R. Crumb's textless cartoon from the late 1970's titled A Short History of America.  Anyone who is familiar with his masterpiece will know what I'm talking about.  Everyone else should seek it out -- on paper, not online, if you can find it!