Careless and Dangerous City and City Hall

As difficult as it still is to write this, here goes (once again). The Hudson Youth Department is responsible for everything related to Oakdale Park, our largest and wildest public park, including maintaining the trails (even if they are owned by National Grid), mowing the grass, maintaining the basketball courts, maintaining the beach, keeping an eye on and removing algae from the lake, the hiring of the lifeguards, and getting a floating dock to the middle of the lake and possibly leaving it there for the entire winter, as was done recently.  No, not the Department of Public Works nor the non-existent Parks Department, but the Hudson Youth Department  with its main office on South 3rd Street about one mile away from the park.

This past Sunday night at 7:15, with the lifeguards long gone, there were 5 children playing on the floating dock that is in the middle of the lake where the water is at least 12 feet deep.  Fifth ward council member Dominic Merante recently announced that Youth Department Director Calvin Lewis had told him that "half of the floating dock is damaged."  Apparently, the damage to the dock is not sufficient to remove it or keep people off of it.  Two of the kids on the half-broken floating dock were wrestling one another. 

As I took my pictures from the street, a resident walking by with her infant stopped and yelled to the kids, telling them that they were not to be in the lake and that they knew they were not to be there.  She and the child had crossed both lanes of the street to do this.  (Smart pedestrians and parents know not to walk on the Oakdale side of the street!)

"Why?" the wiseacre of the group on the broken dock yelled back at her.

"Because the lifeguards told you," she responded (apparently she had been at the park). 

"But the lifeguards aren't here," the kid responded. 

A few minutes later, all 5 were swimming back to the shore.

I then watched as the woman (pushing an empty stroller) and her curious, distracted, adventuresome and new-to-walking toddler continued walking in the shoulder on the west side of the street toward the city's digital sign that blocks the entire shoulder and warns incoming traffic at the bottom of the hill and bend to WATCH FOR CHILDREN.  With mom initially not holding her child's hand, then doing her best to, the two were forced slightly into the traffic lane at the bottom of the hill and bend where on or around December 8th of last year a car slid off the road and went up and over the guardrail and nearly snapped the utility pole in two near the bottom of the hill.  We have Mishanda Franklin at HPD and Joe Ferris at the mayor's office (he told me it was all good!) to thank for that sign completely blocking the shoulder where pedestrians and cyclists are common at the bottom of a hill and bend where speeding vehicles are the norm.  The sign is there at night and on weekends even when the Youth summer camp is not in session and there are no CHILDREN TO WATCH FOR.  The sign is pure careless, disrespectful idiocy ala City Hall.

With car approaching coming down the hill
but out of the picture.

A second or two after I took the above picture, a white car came around the bend and down the hill just as the mother and infant had made their way past the WATCH FOR CHILDREN sign and back into the relative safety of the shoulder.  The driver moved all the way over into the opposing lane of traffic to avoid killing anyone.  No vehicles were headed in the other direction.  I would say the car was doing the speed limit of 25mph, perhaps 30.  (Pictures I took then did not come out well.) 

Pure disrespectful idiocy from City Hall!