It Only Took Ten Years To Convince Rob Perry!

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.

As I recall, Perry replied, "No," adding that everyone who needed to purchase a blue garbage bag knew where to find them by now.  It was typical Perry nonsense dismissiveness.  He's the same DPW Superintendent who refused to put a stop sign at the top of 6th Street at Washington several years ago after residents complained that someone, perhaps a child or two headed to or from Oakdale Park, was going to get run over there simply trying to cross the street where southbound traffic doesn't ever stop.  Perry's reasoning was that a stop sign there might cause his DPW trucks to slide back down the hill toward the park if they had to stop on snow or ice covering the street.  He actually said this at a public meeting.  Police Chief Ed Moore, likely tiring of the valid complaints and concerns, ignored Perry's nonsense and soon got DPW to install a stop sign.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation!

Now back to the lovely graffitied and sticker-peeling garbage bag vending machine with a new sign on it identifying what's inside!  If Rob Perry had anything to do with the recent appearance of the sign on his vending machine identifying its contents, one wonders who convinced him that this was a good idea and that it should happen, or perhaps that it needed to happen ASAP.  One wonders what that conversation was like and who was involved.  One also has to wonder if Rob Perry is going to wait ten years to replace his vending machine's insultingly opaque window, remove the graffiti that has accumulated on it and replace the peeling and ripped 10-year-old decals doing their best to match the stately columns of City Hall.  Do I hear another twenty years? (Goodness, let's hope he sticks around for another twenty!)

Perhaps more concerning is something less conspicuous just a few feet away from the vending machine.  More sloppiness and lack of attention to important details.

The amount of pigeon shit I walked past this morning in the narrow public walkway along the west side of City Hall is disgusting and obscene, just more evidence that Rob Perry is a slob of the highest order and that something is generally wrong inside City Hall.  (Is mayor Ferris a slob, too?)  Preventing birds from spending a few hours or roosting on windowsills is easy. Really easy. You just have to want to do it.  All it takes is one person in City Hall to say, "This is unacceptable, it's a health hazard, it doesn't need to be happening, this should have been taken care of years ago, and we will finally put an end to it now.  We can no longer allow pigeons to be on any windowsills at City Hall for even one second.  We can no longer tolerate piles of pigeon shit to be found surrounding City Hall. We have to be and do better than this. Get it done or find work elsewhere.  Now!  Start by removing the plastic owls; the pigeons laugh at them and shit on them."

This morning, the shit piles under each window 
were pretty bad, though I've seen it a lot worse.

Who is the lucky DPW worker who gets to clean up the piles of pigeon shit every four weeks or so? I bet it's not Rob Perry or Joe Ferris. But it should be! They should be required to take turns cleaning the piles of pigeon shit up until one of them finally realizes the absurdity, health hazard, and waste of time and money of it all. Then maybe they'll both finally put a fucking end to it for good. That might be Ferris's greatest accomplishment of the year! Or two years!

Note to mayor Ferris: The plastic owls on the sills stopped scaring pigeons away long ago, if they ever did at all.  You also have a pigeon and pigeon shit problem on the east side of the building (also with useless plastic owls) that is much worse due to that area being fenced off (no walkway).  You should find all of this 100% unacceptable.