Tkazyik Killing Poughkeepsie’s Rebirth

Parking Meter Information

The City of Poughkeepsie began the instal­la­tion of mul­ti-space park­ing meters on Thursday, June 5^th.

Installation will be com­plet­ed by Monday, June 9^th and enforce­ment will begin Tuesday, June 10^th. On-street park­ing signs will be changed direct­ing motorists to pay the park­ing meter and dis­play the receipt on the dashboard.

Enforcement will be Monday through Saturday 8:00am to 6:00pm. The park­ing rate is .25₵ per 10 min­utes for a max­i­mum 2 hour period.

Any ques­tions regard­ing park­ing meters should be direct­ed to the City of Poughkeepsie Parking Department at 845−451−4120. http://​www​.city​of​pough​keep​sie​.com/​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​t​s​/​d​p​w​/​p​a​r​k​ing

What this com­mu­niqué does not do is make allo­ca­tion for busi­ness-own­ers who need to park dai­ly , some for up to 12 or more hours per day.

At the stat­ed rate of 25c per 10 min­utes , busi­ness own­ers will be forced to fork out $1.50 per hour . A whop­ping $18.00 for a 12 hour work day. This trans­lates into a $108 for a 6 day work week . In addi­tion to that humon­gous bur­den­some and uncon­scionable tax, miss­ing a minute of feed­ing those shiny new park­ing sta­tions will incur hefty fines through the tick­et­ing sys­tem. The ever avail­able Meter Maids are already hov­er­ing around the meters like desert Buzzards wait­ing for an injured ani­mal’s demise.

I called the Parking Department iden­ti­fied myself and sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from a woman who iden­ti­fied her­self as Darlene, on what busi­ness-own­ers should do with their cars after the 2 hour max­i­mum allowed. She claimed she had no idea why the Parking Department’s phone num­ber was put on the site. She told me the deci­sion was made by the big-wigs . I told her I am not con­cerned about big-wigs in Poughkeepsie, she prompt­ly hung up the phone. I called back just to make sure I was not mis­tak­en and she hung up again. I guess my voice was not Caucasian enough.

My next call was to City Hall. The Mayor’s voice came on read­ing off a menu of exten­sions for the var­i­ous Departments of city Government. The Mayor’s exten­sion was the last, exten­sion (6001 pro­duced a curt voice mail, “This mail-box is full, good­bye. That’s our Government work­ing for us!!

Years ago some­one had the nov­el idea that seal­ing off Main street the main artery

run­ning through the city was a good idea.

The Main Mall was an out­door pedes­tri­an shop­ping plaza in down­town Poughkeepsie, New York, which was in exis­tence from 1973 until 2001. An urban renew­al project designed with the inten­tion of stop­ping the decline of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict of down­town Poughkeepsie, the mall was cre­at­ed by block­ing off a sec­tion of Main Street (from Market to Catherine/​Academy Streets) to auto­mo­bile traf­fic. The growth of Poughkeepsie’s imme­di­ate sub­urbs, along with the decline of the City of Poughkeepsie, doomed the project not long after its con­struc­tion. http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​M​a​i​n​_​M​all.

I start­ed a small busi­ness in the city just before the time when the deci­sion was tak­en to reopen Main street. Excellence Barbers was born at 537 Main street. The idea was to bring a well run pro­fes­sion­al Barber-shop to the neigh­bor­hood. I got the idea after mov­ing to Poughkeepsie in 1998 and received less than stel­lar ser­vice in that Industry. I could not ven­ture into any­thing more adven­tur­ous because of lack of resources. Rental was afford­able though , there sim­ply were no legit­i­mate busi­ness­es in my neck of the woods. I signed a 10-year Lease with a month­ly rental of $350 . Had I pushed the Land Lord hard­er I prob­a­bly could have got­ten the premis­es for less. There were no tak­ers for com­mer­cial space in 2001.

Most of the Barber shops then were mere fronts for oth­er ille­gal activ­i­ties . Going to the Barbers was an adven­ture I want­ed to change that. I inter­viewed a group of men and opened my shop then. I had no idea how to cut a strand of hair so I total­ly depend­ed on the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the peo­ple I hired. Despite the fact most of these men were Masters Barbers , I found out pret­ty soon this was not the best Idea I could have come up with for Poughkeepsie.I quick­ly found out that though there was ade­quate poten­tial for growth , most of the men were not pre­pared to go about earn­ing a liv­ing the old fash­ioned way.

The process of diver­si­fi­ca­tion began in earnest soon after.

The city then was a cesspool of drug activ­i­ty, shoot­ings were almost a dai­ly occur­rence. Drug deal­ers ped­dled their wares open­ly in groups, some­times as many as ten or more on each cor­ner. I made it known I want­ed no drug deal­ing in front of my busi­ness-place. One morn­ing as I stopped by to open the Barber shop before leav­ing for my job a group of about 10 men stopped by. Some open­ly dis­played guns . They bragged that they were sell­ing drugs there for years and no one was going to stop them. I watched and assessed the situation.I fig­ured if those punks were going to kill me they would not have wast­ed all that time with brava­do. I told them to stay put I would be right back . On my return about 10 min­utes lat­er, not a sin­gle man could be found on the block. I haven’t had any prob­lem since.

City Detectives arrived a lit­tle lat­er , they asked that I allow them to han­dle things . I told them if what I wit­nessed with the drug deal­ing and open dis­play of ille­gal guns was their way of han­dling things I would have to decline their offer. One African-American Cop was not par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with that state­ment, he nev­er spoke to me after that. Big deal, I lat­er learned he was­n’t exact­ly a pris­tine cop.

The City has record­ed a slow and a painstak­ing climb out of that abyss of drug, pros­ti­tu­tion and mur­der. It is by no means where it should be. With the large influx of Mexican and South American Immigrants, many of whom have start­ed busi­ness­es of their own, the city has seen a marked Renaissance how­ev­er. The Town of Poughkeepsie has in the mean­time blos­somed into a Mecca for shop­ping and din­ing. Every Effort should be made to encour­age busi­ness­es to stay in the City. There is noth­ing offered here which can­not be sourced in the Town. Shoppers will sim­ply shop and receive their ser­vices in the Town where park­ing is free and plen­ti­ful. By the time The big-wigs fig­ure this out we will all be out of busi­ness as those busi­ness peo­ple were decades ago.