One Pedestrian Crosswalk, $600. (Or Is It $1,200?) "Thanks For Nothin', Perry and Ferris" Say The Locals.

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.

12 1/2 of the 17 lines comprising the crosswalk were given new heat-treated decals that are a specialty of DPW.  Rob Perry thinks the decals are great, even though they are ridiculously expensive and do not hold up well over time.  Unlike relatively inexpensive paint which fades evenly and, if it's possible, attractively, our decals tend to break apart in the ugliest of fashion.  Expensive AND ugly.  Win-win for us!

Based on prices I was made aware of two years ago, a 6-foot by 18-inch white street decal delivered to DPW costs us $40.  Propane in a gas tank attached to a heat gun is needed to apply the decals to the street with DPW labor.  If the price for the street decals hasn't changed in two years, the new pedestrian crosswalk at the bottom of the hill of South Front Street that welcomes hundreds of visitors a week to Hudson (a white carpet, if you will) cost city taxpayers $500.  Of course, we need to consider the costs of propane, a few hours of labor times three (crew of 3), gasoline and diesel for the four DPW pickup trucks needed, the time it took Rob Perry to drive to Front Street to take a picture of his new crosswalk for his next DPW report, and whatever else I'm forgetting.  Let's call it our latest $600 pedestrian crosswalk, shall we?  At least for the next few years it will be, at which point it will become our latest renewed $1,200 pedestrian crosswalk.  And so on.  I could be wrong, but I believe the recent renewal of the Amtrak crosswalk was DPW's second effort at keeping it visible (two years ago?).  With decals, of course.   Which means that the shiny white pedestrian crosswalk you see at the bottom of South Front Street just may be our latest $1,200 pedestrian crosswalk, soon to be our latest $1,8000 pedestrian crosswalk.  And so on.  

For some odd reason, there is not one $600 or $1,2000 pedestrian crosswalk at 6th & Columbia to prevent locals from being squashed by a semi-trailer headed to or from Fairview Avenue.  In fact, there are no pedestrian crosswalks of any type or cost at that truck route intersection in a dense residential area.  It's almost as if Rob Perry and Joe Ferris think no pedestrians of any kind, including residents and the disabled, ever use that intersection!  But you can bet your sweet patootie that visitors arriving to and headed out of the playland that is known as Hudson are well protected down by the train station.  Don't you worry one bit, because Rob Perry will spend as much money as he has to to keep visitors to Hudson from being run over!  The rest of us who pay his salary can go suck an egg and walk around the trucks passing through town and waiting at red lights inside pedestrian crossing areas where no white pedestrian crosswalks or stop lines have ever existed.  That is, of course, if the trucks don't kill us first!

The seventh meeting of the Infrastructure Committee meeting is scheduled to take place in about two weeks.  Meanwhile, there has been zero discussion during the past six meetings about crosswalks.  ZERO!  Though crosswalk installation began earlier this month (thanks to a $10,000 pavement marking budget, I believe), Rob Perry has not mentioned where DPW will be installing crosswalks, how many crosswalks will be renewed, how many new crosswalks will be created where they have never existed (ahem!), nor what his budget for pavement markings is this year.  Perry would obviously prefer not to talk about any of this, and Jason Foster and Henry Haddad would rather he keep quiet about it so that they and the public have no idea what the hell is going on or if the intersections away from Warren Street that they traverse daily will ever get a few pedestrian crosswalks to keep them safe.

I guarantee that there will not be one new crosswalk installed by DPW this year in the entire city.   DPW has hit its limit with the expensive material it uses -- there is no money to buy lines for new crosswalks; only old crosswalks can be renewed. And Margaret Morris, Rob, Jason and Henry couldn't care less.  How do I know this?  Because for seven months there has been ZERO public discussion among them about this issue!  ZERO!  

We desperately need a professional city manager.  So-called mayors -- all of them -- are useless and a waste of money.  They lie all the time. Remember last year when Joe Ferris campaigned on making ten intersections safe, without giving any details?  Sounds kinda funny now, don't it?  F'ng hilarious, if you ask me!