Whose Decision Was It ?

Members of the Poughkeepsie Common Council sit and stare, as irate small busi­ness own­ers com­plain about what the new­ly installed Pay sta­tions are doing to their busi­ness­es. From the expres­sions on their faces it would seem they are hear­ing about the loss of busi­ness and the gen­er­al prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry roll-out for the first time. The Mayor is con­ve­nient­ly nev­er in office but the City’s Administrator Milo Bunyi places the blame square­ly at the feet of the Common Council.

Mister Bunyi insists the deci­sion not to place the Pay sta­tions the full length of Main street was the Council’s . Bunyi told me he want­ed the Stations placed in oth­er heav­i­ly used areas, which he claims would enable the City to increase the length of time from $0 .25c for 10 min­utes to $0.25c per 15 minutes.

Presently Pay sta­tions start above the cir­cle at the west­ern end of Main Street by the

Hudson River and ends at the inter­sec­tion of Main and White Streets. There is no ratio­nal expla­na­tion why the sta­tions have been installed in this selec­tive man­ner. I raised that very issue with Mister Bunyi. Bunyi agreed with me that it gave an unfair advan­tage to Businesses from White street ‚east along Main, to the city limits

Out of options, I turned to ShaRon McClinton 6^th Ward Council mem­ber in whose Ward the Stations end. She told me she is unhap­py with the imple­men­ta­tion of the Pay sta­tions. She insists Milo Bunyi is being less than forth­com­ing regard­ing whose deci­sion it was to do the selec­tive imple­men­ta­tion. Council woman McClinton vowed to keep fight­ing, she also promised to get back to me . I am still await­ing her call.

Incidentally too many res­i­dents of Ms, McClinton’s Ward seem not to know the dif­fer­ence between the streets in their com­mu­ni­ty and a garbage recep​ta​cle​.City Hall seem­ing­ly responds to her Ward by the appear­ance of the garage strewn streets.

In the mean­time we have a City with some res­i­dents enjoy­ing an unfair advan­tage over oth­ers, because of the Politics com­ing out of City Hall.

It appears that it will require a Class-Action Law suit to get the City to do the right thing.

It is time for the Mayor to emerge from hid­ing and fix this prob­lem. Our tax dol­lars are just as impor­tant as the peo­ple not hav­ing to con­tend with pay for park.