Do Our New Sidewalks Come With A Warranty? Does The Public Works Board Know What It Is Doing?

In case you haven't noticed it over the past few days, the first of the Public Works Board's six sidewalks of varying lengths "slated for replacement" was completed this past week.  Hoorah! The SID project is off and running!  South 5th from Warren to Union got new concrete on Wednesday and was reopened on Friday thanks to the low bidder for this year's portion of the slow-going, taxpayer funded Sidewalk Improvement District (SID) project, Frank Vosburgh & Sons, Inc., an excavating contractor based in Rhinebeck.  Vosburgh outbid 4 other contractors vying for the project, and by quite a bit.  Their bid of $349,000 was $207,000 lower than the next highest bidder, Luizzi (!!!!) and $500,000 (half a mil!) lower than the highest bidder, a contractor by the name of RAJ Contractors that appears to be based a few miles away in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.  As HUDseen pointed out last summer when Vosburgh was hired to replace several corner curb ramps as part of the ADA-compliance settlement agreement brought to us several years ago by the Federal Department of Justice, nowhere on Vosburgh's website or on the sides of their trucks does it mention anything about concrete work or sidewalks.  First and foremost, they are an excavation company.  RAJ's website claims that one of the several services they provide is concrete work.

Yesterday, just three days after Vosburgh poured their concrete for us to walk on safely for decades, I was able to easily remove small chunks of the supposedly cured concrete from cracks that had already appeared on the two curbs they created.  The pieces I removed were moist.  Soon enough, a hard rain, human foot, or car wheel would have done the job just as easily.

This crack, also at a curb, is found in 
the portion of new sidewalk between Cherry 
Alley and Union, also known as Margaret
Morris' sidewalk.

More loose pieces of new concrete we paid for.

You get what you pay for.

Early this year at a Public Works Board meeting, I made an example of Colarusso's badly cracked concrete on the Ferry Street bridge and Luizzi's awful DRI stone and concrete work to ask the following question:  "Is anyone from the board going to be keeping an eye on the sidewalk work as it is happening to be sure it is done right?"  The answer from the so-called chairman of the group, Gary Purnhagen, was, in essence, "No, we see no need to bother with inspecting the work."

We're paying (how much?) a guy named Ryan Loucks from the local engineering firm Crawford & Associates Engineering & Land Surveying to help the PWB out with their gargantuan SID project, and, apparently, even he thinks that inspecting expensive on-going sidewalk work isn't worthwhile.  When will Ryan or Gary have a look at the cracks and crumbling concrete Vosburgh gave us on South 5th?  Next year, if they get around to it? 

Shouldn't a STOP WORK ORDER be immediately issued to 
Vosburgh before they proceed with work on the next horrible sidewalk that the PWB chose as one of the city's six worst?  (Work is scheduled this week for the west side of North 5th from Warren to Prison Alley.)

No more than 45 minutes after I inspected our newest taxpayer-funded crumbling sidewalk, I was able to take a picture from across the street of an elderly woman who had just fallen to the sidewalk in front of 555 State Street, which, along with adjacent properties to the east and west, is one of the worst of the worst stretches of sidewalk in all of Hudson.  (It is perhaps worse, and certainly longer, than Galvan's sidewalk that was just replaced on South 5th from Warren to the alley.)  A couple walking ahead of the fallen woman helped her to her feet. Thankfully she was not injured, and her head did not hit the sidewalk.  As soon as she stood up, she pointed to the raised section of sidewalk that had put her down.  Then she continued on, likely headed to the farmer's market.  That woman was the fourth person in the past three years or so that I've seen fall along that dangerous stretch.  How many other fallen pedestrians haven't I been fortunate enough to witness?  How many have simply stumbled and not fallen?  (I have, and I've also seen several stumbles!)

According to the Public Work's Board's vigorous sidewalk vetting process, the six most dangerous, ADA-non-compliant sidewalks in the city are all found on either 5th Street or 6th Street, all but one south of Warren. It's beyond clear that the members of the PWB have no idea what they are doing, and they likely never did their "walk through" earlier this year to have a look at every sidewalk the city has to offer. Margaret Morris, who is not a member of the PWB but is the only city official with the word President in their title, somehow got a new SID sidewalk to replace her not at all dangerous sidewalk (South 5th from Cherry Alley to Union), but the residents, taxpayers, and pedestrians of Hudson did not get a much-needed new sidewalk in front of and surrounding 555 State that might prevent someone from falling there again. And again. And again. Until someone falls and slams their head on the uneven concrete and dies or winds up in a coma. Then what will Gary Purnhagen do, if anything? Will he finally put 555 State and its surroundings on the PWB's "slated for replacement" list? Or will he continue to focus on all those horrible sidewalks along 5th Street and 6th Street?

When will this sidewalk make the SID list?
It should be on the current list!