Hudson Mayor: Parking Problems Trump Safety Issues

William Hallenbeck Jr.

William Hallenbeck Jr.

(HUDSON, N.Y., April 30, 2014) – Buried in an article in today’s Register-Star recounting discussion at a Hudson Police Committee meeting this past Monday regarding measures that can be taken to discourage illicit activity widely known among all residents of the city to take place after dark in Hudson’s alleyways – measures as simple as better lighting – was the oddly defensive and contrary response to said discussion by the Friendly City’s dog-hating, parking-obsessed mayor, Bill Hallenbeck Jr., himself a former police officer.

The mayor claimed that he has received absolutely no calls regarding the safety of alleyways from residents or city officials (a dubious claim in and of itself, given that just in the past year, after a string of unprovoked attacks on citizens walking the alleyways at night – culminating in a savage beating of a father and son – the city’s police chief warned Hudson residents to avoid walking the alleys after dark).

In response to an expression of concern voiced by Alderman Henry Haddad, D-3rd Ward, about the safety of passing through city alleys after dark, Hallenbeck – after condescending to Haddad as “new to governance,” as if this somehow might cloud or call into question his judgment about what it’s actually like to walk the city’s streets after dark (one wonders, has the mayor – who lives outside the city’s downtown – actually done this in recent years?) — changed the subject entirely, calling parking on sidewalks, however, a major issue in the Third Ward that Haddad represents. “What I do get many complaints about is people illegally parking on sidewalks in Henry and John’s ward,” he said, referring to Alderman John K. Friedman, D-3rd Ward.

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