by Seth Rogovoy

In what patently looks like election-year pandering, the Register-Star is reporting that Hudson Mayor William H. Hallenbeck Jr. wants to use “funds from the city’s increased fund balance” for two free cleanup days in which the city would pick up bulk items, such as appliances, furniture, tires and mattresses, set outside by residents (“Mayor looks to start up bulk item days,” Register-Star).

This measure hasn’t been on anyone’s list of priorities, which makes it seem like Hallenbeck, reading the tea leaves and noting that he may be up for a serious challenge when he has to run for reelection to keep his seat in City Hall this coming November, is dreaming up ways to buy votes among swing voters. Where was the outcry among city residents to have free bulk pickup?

Hallenbeck apparently woke up one day feeling nostalgic that “when he was growing up, there were free pickups twice a year,” so thought it was a good idea to reinstitute that policy. When Hallenbeck was growing up, the city was dumping raw sewage into the Hudson River, dogs ran free all over the place, as did drug dealers and ladies of the night. Should we bring those things back, too?

Hallenbeck’s own Department of Public Works Superintendent Robert Perry imagines the service would be “extremely expensive,” possibly $10,000 or $20,000, according to the Register-Star.

Hallenbeck is also justifying his measure by claiming to have “generated a lot of revenue and increased our fund balance substantially,” to the tune of $1 million.

In her Gossips of Rivertown blog, independent journalist Carole Osterink (“A New Initiative from the Mayor”) challenges Hallenbeck’s fiscal analysis, quoting the city’s treasurer as having already explained that the city’s “fund balance” is not an amount of money sitting unused in a bank account somewhere. It merely is an accounting term having to do with assets and liabilities.

Osterink also points out that if indeed the city’s coffers were overflowing with a million or more unneeded dollars, there are plenty of taxpayers in town who would like to know why they haven’t been given relief.

(Oh, yeah – I remember – in the past, Hallenbeck has said that if from one year to the next, property taxes don’t go up, that counts as tax relief, since the expectation is that they will always go up. I guess you have to be in his mind to grasp fully the logic of that statement.)

If the city has $1 million to spare, then perhaps it should consider doing away with the annoyance of parking meters on Warren Street, which only bring in about a quarter of that amount, cause frustration and ill-will among residents, visitors, and retailers alike, and wind up costing the city for labor and maintenance of the metering system.