Sunday, April 28, 2024

Sidewalk Update

The Public Works Board, tasked with implementing the Hudson's Sidewalk Improvement District legislation, has met twice in the past couple of weeks. The five-member board is made up of the Commissioner of Public Works, Jason Foster; the ADA coordinator, Michael Hofmann; a member of the Common Council, Gary Purnhagen (First Ward); a mayoral appointee, George Kroenert; and a Council appointee, David Marston. The first thing the board did at its first meeting was to appoint Purnhagen as its chair.


A few things of interest learned from these meetings are the following:
  • Annual maintenance fees will not be charged to property owners until 2025. May is the deadline for adding those fees to the annual property tax bill, and there isn't enough time to calculate the fees before the deadline this year. The annual fee for most residential property owners will be $200.
  • The first focus for sidewalk repair and replacement will be the sidewalks between key areas of service which were the subject of a sidewalk audit done in October 2020. (That study can be found here.) Those sidewalks are;
    • Warren Street from Third Street to Seventh Street
    • Seventh Street from Union to Washington Street
    • North Fifth Street from Warren Street to Prospect Street
    • North Sixth Street from Warren Street to Prospect Street
    • South Third Street from Union Street to Warren Street

It was originally estimated that repairs to these sidewalks would cost $5.5 million. In 2022, the City requested $5 million in Congressionally Directed Funds (CDF) to make the repairs to these sidewalks, but the request was not granted. 

  • The DRI-funded Hudson Connects project, about which the public has heard nothing for a few years now, will address sidewalk repair on Warren Street below Second Street, but Allen, Union, and State streets below Second have been eliminated from the project. What the project actually looks like at this point, after it has been, as Council president Tom DePietro said, "condensed, condensed, condensed," is not known, but that's another story.
Another thing the Public Works Board is tasked with is hiring a project manager to help them scope, prioritize, and carry out the sidewalk improvement project. For the past two meetings, they have been debating whether to hire an individual or a consulting firm to do this work. A decision on that matter has not yet been made.

The next meeting of the Public Works Board will take place on Thursday, May 23. Going forward, the board will meet regularly on the fourth Thursday of the month.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CAROLE OSTERINK

5 comments:

  1. Has the City Charter been amended to reflect this decision?

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    1. It wouldn't be in the charter; it would be in the code. And, yes, it has been. The link in the first paragraph of this post takes you to C22-18 of the city code.

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  2. A boondoggle if there ever was one. This Board has a monumental task ahead of them - one that could have been avoided if we simply enforced the old law. If that happed when this law was first being discussed we'd already be seeing improvements as derelict owners would be motivated to fix their property. As it stands now it will probably be years before any concrete is laid. How does any of this help provide accessibility?

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  3. It has to be approved first. Most likely will not be.

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    Replies
    1. The local law was approved last year, familiarize yourself with the code https://ecode360.com/41745634 or review the common councils deliberations on the subject https://cms3.revize.com/revize/hudsonnynew/Common%20Council/Minutes/2023/rm%20february%2021%202023.pdf

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