I seem to remember attending an informal common council meeting several years ago when someone asked Rob Perry if a sign of some sort on the garbage bag vending machine out front of City Hall would be helpful. You know, like a sign identifying what the blue things are inside the machine.
Last Wednesday or Thursday, the one kiosk for both sides of the 400 block of Warren was installed near the midpoint of the odd side of the block. It is situated adjacent to the middle of a parking space, waiting to be hit by a car door or a human head. Mon Dieu!
Without mayor Ferris's support for "micromobility" as a "valuable addition to our community," these two children may not have been able to ride rented electric scooters on Saturday morning on the wrong side of State Street from 6th to 7th without helmets protecting their brains. For most people, the rented scooters are regarded as mere playthings, and traffic laws, stop signs and red lights are to be ignored. Just the "valuable addition to our community" that we need right now.
I don't know how Hudson survived without one for so long, but at long last there is a lovely ten-thousand-dollar parking kiosk in front of 735 Columbia Street waiting to take your quarters or credit card. No, I swear, there is a kiosk there on the sidewalk! I wouldn't lie to you!
More importantly, perhaps, is the following question: As difficult as it is to imagine, could HPD Parking Captain David Miller be a slob on par with DPW Superintendent Rob Perry?
Yesterday at 12:45 pm, with the farmers market winding down and the Pride Parade soon to begin, just 3 of the 120 parking spaces in the City Hall parking lot were unoccupied. All 3 of them were handicap only spaces.
Late yesterday afternoon, no more than 4 hours after I had called HPD about the several downed temporary orange NO PARKING signs on North 7th Street that had been blown over in the strong winds, they were gone. Removed. Reconsidered. Repurposed. By DPW, no doubt, who had to return to the scene.
While I didn't hear what was said this morning between the parking enforcer and the elderly guy with his phone they were both looking at, I'm pretty sure at least two things were going on. It's been happening a lot this year since parking was supposedly simplified.
6 months and two days ago, at the beginning of a long, cold and snowy winter, HUDseen posted an article about the floating dock in Oakdale Lake that had not been removed to the beach. At the time, the dock was already surrounded by thin ice. Soon, ice thick enough to walk on covered the lake and stuck around for about two straight months. Plenty of snow was soon piled high on the ice and on the dock. For months. Here is some of what I wrote about the dock 6 months ago: "It simply shouldn't be out there right now. Only a wasteful slob, wasteful slobs or a wasteful City Hall would allow this to happen."
The Youth Department's floating dock is primarily made of plastic, and it is no more than two years old. I have no idea who paid for it.
I seem to remember talk about Claire Cousins not showing up to meetings when she was representing Hudson's first ward as a member of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors a few years ago.
As any Hudson or Greenport resident who own a gasoline burning vehicle knows, Fairview Avenue offers a multitude of options to fill up a gas tank. It's part of the charm and beauty that is Hudson's and Greenport's short section of Route 9. While none of the stations may be very pleasant to visit, at least they are there for us. And thank goodness for them all!
At about 8:15 yesterday morning, while in the 500 block of Cherry Alley, I watched as one of County Waste's enormous garbage trucks emptied a few wheelie bins with its mechanical arm. The process of modern garbage collection is fascinating to me, particularly the mechanization of it. Sometimes, the process stops me in my tracks to just watch. The collection of garbage all over the place -- from town to town, alley to alley and street to street -- can be done by a loud, wheeled metal monstrosity whose sole occupant, the driver, rarely has to step out of the cab to touch a garbage can. The drivers don't even know what's inside the cans they are emptying. They don't care. A mechanical arm does all the work from the right side of the truck. Is there a dead body or toxic material in the can? Is the recycling inside full of contaminants? Whatever! Gotta keep movin' on! More garbage ahead! They even have a name for these garbage trucks: Automated Side Loaders. ASL's typically weigh anywhere from 25,000 to 35,000 pounds when empty and 50,000 to 72,000 pounds when full. The average SUV weighs between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds, and not much more when full.
With the help of a throttle, the two then ascended the million-dollar bluestone steps that are full of stains.
All pictures taken this week.
In my estimation, Hudson is becoming a less livable, less walkable, less interesting, less clean, less attractive, less stable and less friendly place to live. Much like America in general. The city has also gotten a lot noisier. Too much damn traffic, too much of it passing through town on the way to elsewhere (State Street is a major artery for vehicles passing through town). And the signs on and near the sidewalks... don't get me started. No one at City Hall or on the Common Council seems to care or be paying attention enough to care about any of it.
A few days following HUDseen's May 15th piece about the ugliness surrounding the e-scooter sidewalk rental business that had just popped up in town, an article appeared in the Register-Star regarding the city forcing the owner to remove her scooters and signs while they looked into the legality of her business. Apparently, the main (or sole) issue was that the signs associated with the scooters were in historic zones. And, apparently, Code Enforcement soon gave the scooter lady the approval she needed, possibly just with a sign permit, and back the fleet of scooters and plastic lawn signs -- now with one large A-frame sign -- came to 3 or 4 locations on our sidewalks along Warren Street.
I took these pictures in the past few days.
The situation with regular "patrons" in the 7th Street Park has taken on a different tone this year. Gone from the north side of the park are Michael Madison and his gang of "patrons." In their place are 6 or 7 "patrons" who have set up camp in the southwest corner of the park in the shade of trees and with the help of folding chairs (during the day only, it seems). This new lair shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone -- including our mayor, the police chief and the DPW superintendent -- since there are plenty of options for "patrons" to utilize free electricity in the south side of the park.
Since I first came across the city's most ideal midnight dumping area a few weeks ago, several discarded items have been added to it. Given the fact that there are no signs or video cameras anywhere nearby, it seems that Joe Ferris, Rob Perry, Mishanda Franklin, Nick Fox and the whole cast of characters supposedly governing the city are perfectly fine with you, me and everyone else living in and around Hudson dumping trash in that quiet no man's land on the 2nd Street extension. Go ahead, it's city property! Drop a couch or broken chair or two (or large bags of fresh garbage!) down there some night instead of taking it to the transfer station to pay for it to be disposed of properly. You know Rob Perry won't mind, and neither will Joe Ferris.
There are plenty of benefits to riding a bicycle rather than driving a 4-wheeled vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds and can kill a pedestrian or bicyclist in an instant, particularly if it's being driven by someone who is distracted by their phone. One of the benefits for me that's not on most cyclist's list is my ability to see just how pervasive the problem of distracted driving really is. Unlike the perspective from a sidewalk or from a vehicle, the insight into drivers' habits a rider is able to get from the seat of a bicycle is unmatched. The distracted drivers that I see far too commonly here in Hudson -- with little to no effort made on my part -- is appalling to me. But it does serve as a reminder: wear your helmet at all times and assume everyone driving a vehicle is distracted in one way or the other! And give 'em shit when they're stopped at a light!
LUIZZI's BACK, BABAY!
The decorative stupidity that arrived on all 4 corners of 2nd & Warren last year as part of the DRI project were ripped out of the ground this morning by Luizzi, the contractor who installed the ugly and dangerous paver stones there in the first place. Pedestrians in all directions were being forced off of closed sidewalks and into the street, just as last year about this time.
Prior to this year, DPW made regular use of the sturdy and ancient metal poles supporting our parking meters when they needed to post temporary NO PARKING signs in preparation of planned events and reacting to unplanned events such as snow emergencies. Think of the meter poles as FREE, PERMANENT, READY AT ANY TIME and WELL-SPACED sign supports that made DPW's job a bit easier and cheaper. Think of the meter poles as dual purpose infrastructure and a big help to DPW. With the parking meters and their poles gone, though, what can DPW attach their temporary orange wooden NO PARKING signs to? Plastic, of course! Cheap and ugly plastic to the rescue once again! More plastic destined for our landfills full of the awful toxic shit that never degrades!
I seem to remember attending an informal common council meeting several years ago when someone asked Rob Perry if a sign of some sort on the...
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