It's worth noting that several of the $19 "Short Term Parking Signs" were posted in the City Hall Parking Lot two months ago while a likely inoperable white van completely full of and topped with junk had been parked in the same parking space in the lot for over one year. Two months later, the van is still there, seemingly ignored by HPD and their new Parking Bureau. In early January, a few days after the van's $250 2025 Parking Lot Permit expired, the City Clerk's Office issued the owner a $250 2026 Parking Lot Permit, allowing the owner to leave his essentially abandoned vehicle in the same spot for 12 more months. The owner of that vehicle has had another junk-filled and topped vehicle parked nearby in the lot unmoved in the same parking space for at least 6 months, also with a 2025 and 2026 permit allowing him to do so. Short term parking signs in a city-owned short term parking lot where vehicles with permits are NEVER required to move. Are you starting to feel dumb and insulted? And just maybe a wee bit angry?
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| Rest assured, Captain Marvelous Miller told the SAFETY Committee (in response to a question from me) that "we're working on the van." |
Have you ever had your vehicle ticketed by HPD for being in the way of the DPW street sweeper or snowplows when they aren't active (the sweeper does not operate in the winter!)? (David C. Miller, Jr. hasn't, I guarantee you that!) Has your personal vehicle (or your neighbor's vehicle) that is so full of garbage that no one can even sit in the driver's seat been parked on the street for the past year and a half unmoved, unticketed and completely ignored by Police Department patrol cops and parking enforcers? If you could purchase an annual $250 on-street parking space permit from the city allowing you one space of your choice that only you can park your personal vehicle in (whether or not your vehicle is filled, topped or surrounded with junk and never moves) without ever being ticketed or towed anytime of the night or day, would you consider it? Fuck yeah, you would! Who wouldn't? Gimme that space in front of my house for $250 and leave my car the hell alone! Touch any junk underneath it or next to it and I'll sue you!
I digress!
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| Last night @ 8:00, 6th & Columbia! |
This morning (above and below). Same sign, same pole.
By 4:00, the wind had knocked the broken, unsecured sign back down to the street. Welcome to Hudson.
In the next few days, DPW -- at the direction of Police Clerk Doreen Danforth, HPD Captain David Miller or HPD Chief Mishanda Franklin -- will be replacing two $19 parking signs that recently (likely yesterday) made their way off of the meter poles they were attached to a few weeks ago on North 6th Street between Prison Alley and Columbia Street. (Two of the four original signs there were still attached to their poles as of this morning.) If retrieved, the city will send those two short term parking signs to a landfill, likely the same landfill that they recently sent three broken/missing signs to which they came across on Columbia Street and on Park Place. In case you are keeping track, at least as far as HUDseen is aware, that's $95 down the fucking drain.
But DPW will not be replacing those one-sided signs with the same type of one-sided signs. No, that wouldn't be too smart, would it? That wouldn't be a wise use of taxpayer funds, would it? That's not how you would spend your own money -- replacing cheap plastic shit with the same cheap plastic shit, throwing good money at bad --would you? Captain David Miller (the city official who gives the parking updates/"breakdowns" to the SAFETY Committee) wouldn't replace what are obviously easily breakable $19 signs with more easily breakable $19 signs that will probably also have to be sent to a landfill sooner than later, would he? Surely, Miller has purchased a more durable, more appropriate sign to replace the $19 short term parking signs that are quickly going missing, broken and... I can't even believe I am writing about this!
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| No sign of the $19 "short term parking sign." (West side of 6th near Columbia last night) |
Yes, I'm afraid, Captain David Miller will be replacing plastic crap with plastic crap. Not only replacing flimsy plastic crap with flimsy plastic crap but replacing flimsy plastic crap with more expensive flimsy plastic crap that is equally vulnerable to damage and vandalism. You see, about a month ago, the geniuses who are playing with our tax donations like they are Monopoly money decided that the single-sided short term parking signs on the meter poles facing the street should have been double-sided to allow drivers the option to read and scan the signs while standing on the sidewalk rather than in the street. And so, in early February, WE the fucking people paid a company by the name of Matthew Signs in Columbiaville another $10 on top of the $19 we already paid them to make twenty of our single-sided 18x10 short term parking signs double-sided. In other words, about a month ago, a city employee or two in a city-issued vehicle drove about 15 miles north of Hudson to drop off 20 of the single-sided signs with a sign company to have them transformed to better suit our needs. The vehicle and employee(s) then returned "to work." One wonders who made that delivery. Was it Captain Miller himself? Or did he send Rob Perry and his foreman in Rob's white SUV? It gets better, though, and the carbon footprint for these signs never seems to end. It appears that those 20 signs needing another side of text were originally picked up from Matthew Signs by a Hudson employee (or two) driving a city-issued vehicle on one of three days in January as part of a job by the sign company to manufacture 100 of the single-sided signs. That's three 30-mile round trips made to pick up 30, 40, then 30 $19 plastic short term parking signs and bring them back to Hudson so that they can be put on the tops of parking meter poles to eventually need to be replaced by $29 double-sided signs so that they too can soon wind up broken on the ground then in a landfill 300 miles away somewhere in central New York. The material used for the signs hasn't changed, but the price sure has.
(Wrap your head around this summary, if you can. In January, over the course of three round trips to Columbiaville (south of Kinderhook), one hundred $19 single sided short term parking signs were picked up by a city employee in a city vehicle and brought to Hudson. 20 of those signs were soon driven back to Columbiaville to have text printed on the back of them. Vehicle and paid employee(s) return to Hudson without signs, driving 15 miles or so for 20 minutes or so (perhaps more if a stop or two at Stewart's was involved). Vehicle and employee(s) soon return to Columbiaville to pick up the 20 double-sided signs ready for pickup and return with them to Hudson to install one or two of them on Columbia Street where the first two of the easily breakable short term parking signs have somehow been broken and must be thrown in the trash.)
Hudson City Hall and HPD are literally throwing our money away and destroying the planet at the same time. And the mayor and the Common Council are full of smiles the entire time! And Captain David Miller will tell you that "parking is going great" as if we're all 12-year-olds. And the Register Star will write what Captain Miller tells them: Parking revenue is way up!
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| Brother, can you spare $29? Think of it as a short term loan, brother! |
Thank goodness parking revenue is up! But it sure couldn't have happened without all those $19 and $29 short term parking signs Hudson residents keep being forced to pay for that HPD and DPW keep replacing, that's for sure!
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| A city in full decay mode! |
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