Typically, when I test our new $10,000 parking kiosks to make sure they are paying for themselves, one of two things happens. Via the digital screen, after a few taps on keys, they either respond that they are ready to take money for parking spaces or there is a printer error keeping them from taking money. On Thursday, I had to add another result to the list: No response at all. No surprise there!
Sometime this week or last, DPW renewed the pedestrian crosswalk across Front Street at the Amtrak station. That crosswalk -- perhaps the city's longest -- first appeared 4 or 5 years ago, as I recall. (It can be seen on Google maps from 2022 but not from 2018). White paint was originally used, so it's difficult to say who installed those lines years ago.
... are any crosswalks or stop lines at all! Everything is fine there! Don't waste the money and effort! Stick to Warren!
Anyone who contends with overnight on-street parking (and plenty who don't) knows that you risk a $15 WRONG SIDE parking ticket from HPD if you fail to adhere to whatever overnight parking rule exists on your street (odd/even is not the only rule), regardless of signage or no signage. Additionally, just about everyone on the planet knows that the reason for the overnight parking rules is twofold: to allow the Hudson DPW street sweeper to do its thing outside of winter, and for DPW to be able to plow streets of snow to the curbs within two nights. That's it; it's not complicated: Stay out of the way of the sweeper and the plows or you will be ticketed. All streets need to be swept; all streets have an overnight parking rule of one sort or another.
Listed below is what just about anyone would regard as important Hudson Police Department activity data covering the month of May 2026. Except, it seems, for our own police chief. In her (yet again) ridiculously brief so-called HPD report at last month's meeting of the so-called SAFETY Committee, Mishanda Franklin didn't mention any data related to crime and quality of life issues, what her department is doing to prevent crime, what her department is spending time doing, nor if there are any concerning crime and quality of life issue trends in Hudson. Apparently, everything is fine in town and there is nothing to worry about. Hooray for us!
It's been about a month and a half since HUDseen last wrote about the Hudson Parking Bureau not being available to the public (closed) for a few days. Something is not right over there at 701A Union. *
During his DPW report to the Infrastructure Committee (CODE is gone! Out! Done! Moved!) last Monday, DPW Superintendent Rob The Slob Perry described his department's recent replacement of the angled pedestrian crosswalk across Warren just west of City Hall Place. It turns out that crosswalk in front of Hudson Hall was never ADA-compliant, so it should never have been installed in the first place (it's been around in one form or another for several years). Time to try again. Once the new crosswalk was installed straight across Warren east of City Hall Place, Rob explained, "the one by the Opera House was melted and removed." Perry was kind enough to include a picture of a portion of our new crosswalk but failed to include one of the "melted and removed" former crosswalk if only because there was nothing to take a picture of. Or so he wanted the committee members and the public to believe.
I took the first two pictures on July 2nd and July 4th. They show a portion of the "walkway" that leads from the sidewalk to the front porch and doors of the 2-family house at 80 - 86 North 6th Street, a property owned and lived in by Hudson's second highest paid city employee.* Presumably, there is a mailbox or two near the front doors. Maybe even a doorbell or two that work. This wide property is along my regular walks to and from Oakdale Park and elsewhere.
Not long before former HPD Police Chief Ed Moore resigned 3 years ago, HUDseen ran a piece or two calling into question his cognitive soundness. I noticed him saying things at council meetings that made no sense. He didn't seem like he was able to pay attention. Something was amiss. Then he said goodbye after ten years as our top law enforcement official, handing the baton to Lieutenant Mishanda Franklin. Moore, a Germantown resident and former NY State cop who grew up in Hudson, had been called in from recent retirement to right the ship at the troubled HPD, long plagued by dysfunction and misconduct.
About a week ago, I had the misfortune of finding myself walking on the odd side of the 300 block of State Street. (Note to self: If possible, avoid in the future!) The word obscene came to mind. These 5 pictures show the last stretch approaching 3rd.
It's been at least two years, but it's time once again for another HUDseen article titled SINKHOLE CITY. There are a lot of little holes to go around this time, some of them big expensive. Our aging infrastructure is getting the best of us, and I can't imagine how much money we are spending just to keep up. All of this comes on the heels of the huge (and hugely expensive) repair of the failed section of Harry Howard near Underhill Lake. Though the State DOT covered the costs for that emergency which Colarusso was hired for (about $250,000, I believe), the work necessary to fix what follows below will have to be paid for with city taxpayer funds. If they are available.
Just over two months ago, HPD Captain David Miller did his best to convince everyone at the May meeting of the so-called SAFETY Committee that HPD issued "200 to 250 or more" speeding tickets in the first quarter of this year. It was laughable. It was an outright lie, though Miller conceded that since he didn't have the data with him that he was just approximating. And it didn't help that, as he admitted later in an email, he thought he was being asked (by two different residents!) about traffic tickets in general, not specifically about speeding tickets. (Both residents uttered the term "speeding tickets" multiple times.) Last month, Miller also didn't have the data with him when asked by the same concerned Warren Street resident who showed up to the meeting again and had asked him for the same numbers the month before. During last Monday's July meeting, Miller didn't have the data again because, as Mishanda Franklin explained, he was on vacation. It must have been an unplanned vacation, because at last month's meeting Miller was asked by committee chair Henry Haddad if he would bring the speeding ticket data with him to the "next meeting," and he said that he would. Fortunately, Chef Franklin brought the speeding ticket data for the second quarter with her to share with everyone.
I first noticed the posters critical of our mayor's handling of the Mill Street Lofts project this afternoon at State & Dodge. I don't recall seeing anything similar during his predecessor's six years in office. Ferris has really disappointed a whole lot of residents who voted for him.
It's not dumb enough that anyone standing in front of or interacting with one of the city's $10,000 sidewalk parking kiosks has no way of knowing what hours and days paid parking is in effect. No, it gets dumber than that, thanks to HPD Parking Captain David Miller. (Though, I imagine, he would deny being in charge of decorating, maintaining or programming the kiosks, saying instead, "that's someone else's responsibility, not mine." Miller is glad to give his monthly parking report to the SAFETY Committee with data from the Parking Bureau that is supposedly run by someone else, but he'll take no responsibility for anything that goes wrong with the Parking Bureau's GREAT new paid parking scheme.)
About two weeks ago, Galvan's long neglected and vacant house at 59 Short Street was demolished. Gone. Yet another case of demolition by neglect, brought to us in equal parts from City Hall (ignoring Galvan's neglect) and from the city's largest landowner (neglecter associate of City Hall, Galvan).
During the HPD report at this past Monday's Safety Committee meeting, I think you forgot to ask Police Chief Mishanda Franklin a few questions. (At least a few!) It seemed as though the cat got your tongue or you missed something that you were told. Please forgive me if I am mistaken.
For readers who are unaware, one of the city's speediest and most dangerous stretches of road is Glenwood Boulevard/North 6th Street (from Parkwood to Washington, likely close to a half mile in distance), and it is most definitely more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists than it is for drivers.
Glenwood (I'm going to leave 6th street out of it for now) has got it all: a pair of steep hills, one with a sharp bend, long straightaways, two park entrances, driveways, and zero police enforcement of the speed limit. A few years ago, complaints from nearby residents forced the city to install a speed radar sign designed to slow down traffic headed into town, found at the end of the long straightaway prior to the hill and bend leading down to the lakes. Or, more accurately, the sign was designed to tell drivers how fast they were moving. Most of them, at least. You see, not only is there no speed limit sign near that digital sign, but a few weeks ago I noticed that if drivers approach the sign going 30 miles per hour or faster, it won't display their speed until their speeding car is beyond the sign. In other words, the fucking thing is useless. Think Mishanda Franklin cares that that sign is no help?
If there was one thing that Tom Depietro and I agreed on, it was this: Margaret Morris repeats herself to the level of annoyance. And he called her out on it at least twice at meetings -- it drove him nuts, as it should have. Morris' habit of repeating her thoughts, ideas and comments -- sometimes within the same sentence, sometimes within seconds or minutes, sometimes within weeks or months -- is bizarre, concerning and it makes it difficult to pay attention to what she has to say. And now that she is the president of the Common Council, her repetitiveness really is on full display (but, of course, no one can criticize her for it). Morris is a time waster and progress killer, and I'm starting to see the annoyance on the faces of council members, particularly Henry Haddad, when she speaks (especially when she goes on and on). Morris is also a huge interrupter, as Depietro was. That habit, too, is concerning and annoying. And rude; it seems to go along with the job.
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On Saturday morning, after no more than 5 minutes of observing pedestrians crossing the Warren Street end of Park Place, I took four revealing pictures within the span of about ten seconds. It's frightening how many close calls there are everyday at this turn in the city's eastern truck route; the dangers for pedestrians there have become normalized by City Hall. Someday, if I'm (un)lucky, I just might get a picture of a pedestrian or three in the crosswalk being struck by a turning car or truck, perhaps being run over and killed or just paralyzed for life. I can't think of a pedestrian crosswalk that would be more appropriately featured in a handbook on traffic safety in a chapter titled "How To Kill and Injure Pedestrians Without Trying."
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For anyone wanting to let City Hall know about a problem they see or hear, there are numerous categories to choose from to make a "request" on the Hudson Hub app, from "Fences" and "Noise" to "Traffic signal." The idea is, presumably, that if a city department agrees that your request is a problem, they'll take care of it. But it's not always that straight forward. Often, help is not on the way.
At the April meeting of the Conservation Advisory Council, I asked chairperson Rich Volo what, if anything, the council does about homeowners who fail to maintain their sidewalk trees, particularly in terms of weeds and litter at bases that go ignored for months or year after year. Here is exactly what Rich responded with: "It's the responsibility of the owner to maintain their tree."
National Grid was busy dealing with three downed trees in the city on Tuesday night and much of Wednesday after the storm blew through town. One of the three trees that combined to knock out power to all, or nearly all, of the city was located on the west side of the entrance to 810 Union. The entire tree toppled in the wind, bringing down a utility pole just beyond the east side of the entrance, with the top of the tree reaching all the way across the adjacent parking lot entrance of the ophthalmology office. Unsurprisingly, it didn't seem to have much of a root structure at all.
Yesterday morning, I came across one Luizzi worker creating a lot of noise and dust on North Front Street while doing his best to improve the ill-advised decorative stones along the sidewalk that Luizzi left us last year and that the city found to be unacceptable early this year. It's entirely possible that he was one of Luizzi's many workers doing shoddy stonework on Front Street and elsewhere last year as part of the multi-million-dollar DRI project on the city's west end that supposedly wrapped up a year and a few days ago.
Typically, when I test our new $10,000 parking kiosks to make sure they are paying for themselves, one of two things happens. Via the digit...
