Hudson Residents Were Sold A Bill Of Goods. Ossining Residents Were Not.

I spent a bit of time in downtown Ossining this past Saturday, a village I am quite familiar with. While Ossining has about five times the population of Hudson, its downtown commercial district is not quite as large as ours and it certainly isn't the visitor's destination that Hudson's downtown is (but at least they still have at least one pizza joint that sells by the slice!). And they, too, are going through some growing pains -- two public parking garages are in the works. One thing I was glad to see unchanged in Ossining was their old parking meters. There they were, still ready to take quarters, still doing their quiet but efficient work. No kiosks or scannable signs were anywhere to be seen, thank goodness. Then I noticed the stickers on the back of the meters. And that's when I realized all over again that Hudson got it all wrong when we decided to chuck our meters in the trash.

You see, unlike Hudson (the Parking Study Committee, Kamal Jonhson and HPD top brass, primarily), Ossining was smart about transitioning to a modernized paid parking system.  They left their trusty meters alone, allowing people to still pay for a parking space with quarters, but they also gave visitors and residents the option to download a parking app on their phone and use it to always pay for parking.  No scannable signs on streetlight poles and the tops of parking meter poles all over the place creating clutter and ugliness AND EXPENSES.  Just a small sticker with no scan code on the back of each parking meter!  No $10,000 parking kiosks at the curbs taking up precious space, waiting to get knocked over by an errant vehicle or door, waiting to be graffitied, needing maintenance, needing receipt paper and needing the sun. Just a small sticker on the back of each meter directing people to the villages' chosen parking app.

Ossining:  Stickers applied to the back of parking meters that can still be filled with quarters.  

Hudson:  Get rid of hundreds of parking meters that allowed anyone to pay for a parking space in seconds with a coin or two.  Buy $150,000 worth of kiosks, take forever to install them all (on one side of each block), buy scannable signs galore and install them everywhere imaginable to beautify your downtown and make parking easier for visitors and residents.  Replace signs that fall to the ground.  Force everyone to use their phones or kiosks to pay for parking, a process that can and does take minutes.

And just keep repeating, as Parking Captain David Miller has over and over, "Parking is going great!"  Parking is going great!  Parking is going great!

A Hudson parking enforcer recently helping out
  confused visitors.  Good thing he was there to help!

One nice touch that Ossining has had for a long time are hanging flower baskets on their streetlamp poles, something I recall Hudson trying for a summer or two about 8 years ago.   And there they were on Saturday, adding a touch of class, color and beauty.  I soon realized that even if mayor Ferris wanted to hang flower baskets from our streetlamp poles, it wouldn't be possible.  The flowers would block the new scannable parking signs, creating chaos.  And that would not be good!  Hooray for ugly parking signs!  Down with beauty and class. 

Repeat after me: Parking is going great!