It's going to be a quiet week in Lake Woebegone as August ends and September begins.
- On Wednesday, September 1, the Hudson Industrial Development Agency (IDA) holds its regular monthly meeting at 1:00 p.m. in Suite 301 at One City Centre. The agenda for the meeting is not known, but we can safely assume it will not include any deliberation or decision on the proposed Galvan project. The IDA cannot act on that project until the Planning Board has completed the SEQRA process, and that hasn't happened yet.
- At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 1, Mayor Kamal Johnson holds a public hearing on the proposed local law regarding the registration of bicycles. The hearing will take place in the Council Chamber at City Hall.
- On Thursday, September 2, the Conservation Advisory Council meets at 6:00 p.m. The meeting takes place at City Hall. Certain to be on the agenda is the draft Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) for the solar farm project. Peter Bujanow, Commissioner of Public Works, presented the RFEI to the Common Council ad hoc committee on Wednesday. Bujanow's earlier suggestion that the capped landfill be included in the RFEI had been an issue of concern for the CAC. After the CAC meeting on June 1, it was assumed that the landfill was no longer part of the RFEI, but the maps included in the draft RFEI indicated otherwise. The RFEI was posted on the city website on Friday, without the maps, but it has since been removed altogether. Earlier today, in a comment posted on Gossips, "unheimlich" reported: "I've been reassured by Council President DePietro that the draft RFEI was entirely in error, and that there's no plan whatsoever to site a solar array on the landfill." The CAC is likely to need further assurance.
And those are the meetings for the week.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK
Finally the city will require everyone to register their bicycle. What a relief! But will the HPD continue to ignore all the bicyclists who are going the wrong way on one way streets, riding through stop lights and signs, riding on the sidewalks and through the 7th street park (where there are 3 NO BICYCLING signs)? If I could attend the meeting I would ask "why are you even bothering to do this and what will the fee be for not having a bicycle registered? How much time will HPD officers devote to checking bicycle riders for their registration?"... and a few other questions trying to make me believe that this is not a complete and embarrassing waste of time and not yet another example of much of City Hall being stuck in the 1970s.
ReplyDeleteB Huston
The intent of the revision is to remove the requirement to register bicycles, I think. Click on Carole's link to read the proposed amendment.
DeleteThis week is not the first time you've joked that "there ought to be a law."
DeleteTo me that's a distasteful instinct, but enforcing quality of life laws once established is the essence of the generally laudable "broken windows" approach to policing.
Unfortunately our City Code is bloated with statutes and definitions, many of them poorly written and presenting a challenge for any police department or Code Office to enforce.
It's paradoxical, then, to want to add even more Code requirements when doing so makes their collective enforcement that much less possible.
Just some food for thought the next time you think, "There oughtta be a law."
The proposal is the opposite of what you seem to believe.
DeleteThere is currently a bicycle license and registration requirement in the City of Hudson. The proposed law removes the sections of the code referring to it since the program as outlined in the city code is an anachronism, is not currently enforced, and would generally be considered by most to be a waste of Hudson Police Department's time.
I feel like the City of Toronto has a thorough explanation for why they stopped doing this too:
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/cycling-in-toronto/cycling-and-the-law/bicycle-licencing/
Well, I stand corrected and am glad there will likely be a change in the code. A whole lot more code amending needs to be done, much of it more important than bicycle registration
DeleteThis likely stems, at least in part, from my getting a ticket a few months ago from HPD for, yes, not having my bicycle registered. 2 days later I called HPD and asked them where I could get my bike registered, but they didn't know and I was told to "call city hall." City Hall was confident that the youth dept did bicycle registration, and it even said so on the city website. I knocked on the door at Youth and inquired -- 5 minutes later I was told "we stopped doing that ten years ago." The city judge dismissed my ticket after I told him that story and I had a good laugh in the courtroom.
Bill Huston
great example of dysfunctionalism
Delete