It's Now An Epidemic! An Ugly and Dangerous Epidemic On Our Sidewalks That Rob Perry is Fine With! Send In The Public Works Board, Please!

The number of sections of concrete sidewalks in town that magically turn into lumpy black asphalt and remain that way has gotten to obscene proportions in the past few years.  The most recent ugly and dangerous sidewalk code violation I've noticed is impossible to avoid and lumpy as hell (perhaps the worst of them all), waiting to put someone on their chin (slamming it into concrete, of course).  It appeared this week or last in front of Galvan's rental property at 17 North 3rd Street, a two-family most recently assessed at $150,000 that is 100% tax-exempt and appears to have been exempt since 2006.  The questions are obvious:  Who replaced the concrete sidewalk with asphalt and why?  Do they have a plan to replace the asphalt with the material it replaced?  Are they required to do so (if anyone is required to do anything in Hudson)? And why does the city not care that it happened and that the practice has become so common all around the city?  And, of course, why is 17 North 3rd completely tax-exempt, and does anyone at City Hall know it is?

It was at least five years ago when I first started seeing our sidewalks turn black that I made an effort to understand what department is responsible for enforcing the code that clearly states all sidewalks must be made of concrete.  I posed the question to head Code Enforcement Craig Haigh, and his response was helpful.  I guess.  Craig told me that Code Enforcement only deals with sidewalk issue related to safety (ha!), while DWP deals with sidewalk issues related to materials used to construct our walking surfaces.  In other words, if a property owner or contractor replaces a concrete sidewalk with something other than concrete, Rob Perry -- not Craig Haigh -- is supposed to do some sort of enforcement to undo the code violation regardless of whether the new asphalt sidewalk is unsafe.  

But at the most recent meeting of the so-called CODE & INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE (which Nick Fox is not a part of), our $125,000 DPW Superintendent offered proof that DPW can't do anything about preventing or getting rid of asphalt sidewalks.  Perry told the committee that DPW has no enforcement powers and does not issue violation tickets of any kind.  EVER!  This admission came after a question from, I believe, committee member Henry Haddad in regard to the long-closed sidewalks at 4th & Warren as they related to DPW being the department that issues SIDEWALK PERMITS that allow contractors and property owners to block sidewalks for whatever reason.  Perry further explained that it was "just one of those things" (he actually said this!) that DPW was long ago given the responsibility of issuing sidewalk permits even though DPW has absolutely nothing to do with sidewalks and has no ability to enforce their own permits.  

Alas, what Henry Haddad should have immediately asked Perry is obvious, isn't it?  "Rob, if you're telling us now that you never should have been the department issuing sidewalk permits, why have you been doing what you knew you shouldn't have been doing during the past 16 or 17 years that you have been the city's DPW Superintendent?  Why didn't you ever make any effort during the past two decades to get the sidewalk permits in the hands of the department properly suited to issue and, most important, enforce them?  Why didn't you say to the council or a mayor, 'DPW absolutely should not be issuing sidewalk permits; we are the wrong department for the task, if only because we cannot enforce the permits.  Plus, DPW has nothing to do with sidewalks in front of private property.  We don't touch them and we don't look at them.  The issuance of sidewalk permits is a task better suited for Code Enforcement.'?  Why, Rob, did you keep this problem to yourself for so long, a problem that your department never should have been saddled with in the first place?  Why is this coming out now only after we brought the issue up to you?  Were you planning on ever saying anything to us about this issue/problem that you have apparently been aware of for years and years?  Did it ever once occur to you to correct a problem at DPW that you have likely been aware of since you became DPW Superintendent?  How much time have your clerks spent on issuing but not enforcing DPW sidewalk permits for the past 17 years?  

Rob, and I mean this in all seriousness, are you okay?  Do you have some sort of cognitive or ego problem?  Are you working with us or against us?  Are you trying to make the already difficult and challenging task of governing Hudson better or worse?  Are you doing your best to make life for Hudson residents better or worse?  From my standpoint, Rob, you are not being at all helpful.  You are part of the problem; the wrench in the machine, if you will.   Is there anything else that DPW should not be doing that you have been keeping to yourself for nearly twenty years?  Tell us now, please, so that we can improve things for you, for DPW, for this committee, for City Hall, and for every resident of the city.  You do want to improve life in Hudson and how things operate here at City Hall, don't you, Rob?  If you don't want to help matters, Rob, tell us right now and then leave the room.  And please don't come back.  Ever."

Directly in front of the police station.  
This asphalt appeared at least two years ago.

Instead of any hard questions or stern words for Rob Perry, Henry Haddad and committee chair Jason Foster both agreed that it was time to give the responsibility of issuing SIDEWALK PERMITS to the Code Enforcement Department.  Henry said that he would talk to Nick Fox about this idea.  Of course, in a theatrical display of dysfunctional WTF worthy of an Oscar, since no one from the Code Enforcement Department is involved with the CODE & INFRASTRUCTURE Committee, neither Rob, Henry, nor Jason could run their idea by head Code Enforcement officer Nick Fox right then and there to see how he felt about taking on the task of issuing SIDEWALK PERMITS to contractors and property owners, a task that should have been in the hands of the Code Enforcement Department all along.

And you wonder why our sidewalks are getting blacker and blacker and lumpier and lumpier, not to mention dangerouser and dangerouser!  Fear not, dear fellow pedestrians, for the four members (there should be five!) of the Public Works Board (including the mayor's aide and so-called ADA-Coordinator, Tiffany Martin) are probably working right now on the underlying problem recently exposed by the CODE (not) & INFRASTRUCTURE Committee!  Soon enough, perhaps by the year 2097, the PWB will see that every current and future section of black asphalt sidewalk -- no matter how many of them there are -- is replaced with concrete by a hired paving contractor thanks to the taxpayer funds the PWB will continue to collect (take?) from certain property owners as part of their sad SID project.  Because, as we all know, Tiff, Tyler, George, and Gary have as little toleration for lumpy black asphalt sidewalks as mayor Ferris, Rob Perry, Jason Foster, Henry Hadddad, and Nick Fox do.

We're all in good hands!  Certainly, too many hands, but all good hands nonetheless!

2 years going on 3?  4 going on 5?