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