Another Mayoral Initiative
It all started in June 2014, when Mayor William Hallenbeck proposed a plan to ameliorate the parking problems around the hospital: resident parking permits. In the usual course of things, the proposal went to the Common Council Legal Committee to be turned into a law.
Two months later, the mayor was complaining bitterly to the press that the Legal Committee was turning his proposal "into a monster." One of the things the Legal Committee had done was to expand the proposal to include additional streets--Warren Street from Eight Street to Worth Avenue, Frederick Street, and Worth and Rossman avenues. "It seems now," the mayor grumbled, "that my proposal is not my proposal anymore; it's becoming the proposal of the Legal Committee, who have the option of changing things and bringing it to the council."
Now, in January 2015, the law is ready to move forward. It is anticipated that the law will be in its final form, with a map showing the areas affected, for the February Common Council meeting. The next step is for the Council to pass a "home rule message" and to submit the law to the Hudson and Columbia County planning boards for review. But there's a new wrinkle. The mayor wants the law to be expanded to include all of Hudson, requiring every resident who does not have offstreet parking to have a permit to park on the street in front of his or her home. Read all about it in today's Register-Star: "As parking plan heads for home, mayor looks citywide."
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
Even more layers of bureaucracy and money for their coffers.
ReplyDeleteWhy is a whole city held hostage to a problem the CMH needs to deal with ?
A City-wide parking permit rule? Well, that will do wonders for tourism, won't it?
ReplyDeleteSometimes I get the impression that Hallenbeck thinks of Hudson as a two-square-mile prison, where we are the inmates and he the warden, monitoring our every movement.
To hit people's pocketbooks in such a gratuitous way, watch out that residents don't suddenly take an interest in City Hall. (Ya never know.)
ReplyDeleteI remember the mayor exaggerating the new "strategic alliance" between Columbia Memorial Hospital and Albany Med last August. He actually tried to graft an issue which only concerns the more efficient sharing of medical documents onto his already draconian parking proposal.
So next you'll need a permit to park in front of your home? And this is a Republican measure?!
Yet another example of governance through consent of the tourist.
ReplyDeleteMight it be that our leaders have squeezed all of the juice from the tourism grape, and each additional tourist added, reduces the rights of the "full time" residents they were elected to serve?
Time to (re)read Ricardo's theory of diminishing returns and incorporate alternative income streams, maybe payroll taxes from industries other than tourism.