More About the Hudson Sloop Club

Our post about the Hudson Sloop Club on Tuesday inspired Jennifer Arenskjold to send these pictures, taken at the fish fry last Friday. The centerpiece of each is the Mariana, a smakkejolle sailboat that belongs to Kim Arenskjold. The Mariana, which is forty or fifty years old, is an example of an old style of Danish sailboat still in use today. It was shipped here from Denmark last year. It is now undergoing some restoration at the sloop club before being launched on the river this summer.

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 23

I learned yesterday that at least three people have taken the Gossips challenge and are out there searching for architectural details. That's exciting! There's just a little more than a week left in National Preservation Month and a long weekend coming up for walking and looking. Here's the detail for today.

A Special Message for First Warders

Gossips is headquartered in the First Ward, so this post is meant for my neighbors and former constituents. Thanks to our current aldermen, Dave Marston and Nick Haddad, Hudson's new police chief, Ed Moore, will meet with residents of the First Ward at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 23, at Basilica Hudson, to hear about the worrisome things that have been happening in our neighborhoods.

While We Were Sleeping

Gossips slept right through it, but apparently, around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Hudson experienced torrential rain, jolting thunder, and wind strong enough to make some consider taking shelter in the southwest corner of the basement. It was then that Hudson's new waste water treatment plant, which can handle 17 million gallons a day, was overwhelmed. For 23 minutes--from 2:06 to 2:29 a.m.--there was what is known as a CSO--combined sewer overflow--and untreated waste water spilled out into North Bay. 

DPW superintendent Rob Perry reported this, as required, to DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) and the Columbia County Department of Health and, as not necessarily required, to the public, at the Common Council Public Works Committee meeting on Wednesday night. The good news is that, since not many people are taking showers or doing the laundry or flushing toilets at 2 o'clock in the morning, what overflowed into North Bay was storm water.

About Those Ten Acres

There was a resolution included in the aldermen's packets last night (and in those given to the press) "Authorizing Litigation Against Holcim US to Recover Costs Related to the Proposed Transfer of Riverfront Land to the City of Hudson." The resolution was withdrawn, by Council president Moore, but the issue was the subject of some discussion. 

Attached to the resolution was this rendering of the dock area that was part of the St. Lawrence Cement Greenport Project. The rendering shows the dock facility extending onto the parcel of land the City of Hudson seeks to acquire.

Moore opened the discussion by asking rhetorically what the goals for the waterfront were and suggesting that one of them was to ensure that there would be no cement plant in Hudson. City ownership of the ten acres immediately south of the port, he pointed out, would accomplish this goal because it would prevent the expansion that the rendering suggests would be necessary for a cement operation. Moore suggested that a second goal was to obtain ownership of the entire port and obtaining this parcel could be seen as the first step toward obtaining the entire port. Moore advised the Council, "We have to decide whether or not we want to proceed with eminent domain on the ten acres."

Alderman Nick Haddad (First Ward) was unrestrained in his criticism of Holcim and its handling of the situation, saying Holcim had "acted in a villainous fashion." "Is this," he asked, "a harbinger of what they plan to do in the future?"

Moore said of the land transfer, "This issue is not over." Other aldermen concurred. Alderman Chris Wagoner (Third Ward) said, "We lost our way in the controversy over who owned it," but expressed his conviction that "we need to acquire the property." Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward), who has always maintained that the City would be the best steward of the ten acres, asserted, "It doesn't make sense for the City not to own it." He went on to say, "Holcim created an expectancy when they created the document [referring to the contract that Holcim has not signed]. They owe us some money, and at the very least we should go after them."

Mayor William Hallenbeck said that he would be "happy to obtain the land as a transfer" but cautioned against "going after them for damages." Seeming to think the Council was considering trying to acquire the entire port through eminent domain, he admonished the Council to "keep the financial stability of the City in mind" in their discussions about using this strategy. Later in the conversation, when Moore spoke of "continuing to have discussions about obtaining the land" and Haddad described the parcel as a "critical and fundamental component of the health and well-being of the city going forward," Hallenbeck suggested that, in a discussion about "what's critical and what isn't," a priority should be "developing on land we already own."

The discussion ended with city attorney Cheryl Roberts, who was the last to be in contact with Holcim, delivering the message she had received from Holcim counsel: "The City needs to be patient. Holcim is committed to transferring the property."

Nothing Is Ever Easy

The outcome of yesterday's school board election wasn't as simple as Gossips presented it last night. It seems that Lynn Lee, the candidate who received the second highest number of votes, is a teacher in the Hudson City School District. She plans to retire on June 30, 2013, but she hasn't retired yet. That situation prevented her from being sworn in last night and may cost her the seat on the Board of Education. Lynn Sloneker explains the situation at her blog Unmuffled.

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 22

Gossips' observance of National Preservation Month continues. Each day, a different architectural detail is presented. Gossips invites readers to identify the location of the each detail and submit all your answers at the end of the month. Here is the detail for today.

Of Interest

Right now, if you click here, you can watch a meeting of the New York State Liquor Authority. One of the items on the agenda is this:

To the Finnish

At last night's Common Council meeting, the aldermen unanimously approved a resolution authorizing Mayor William Hallenbeck to enter into a purchase agreement for 701 Union Street. John Mason has the story in today's Register-Star: "Council OKs first step to buy Finnish Line for police, court."

For more than a decade, the need to provide a better facility for the police department and the city court has been a problem city government has struggled to solve, and there had been a series of solutions proposed--some involved entirely new construction, some involved repurposing existing structures, all seemed out of reach or unacceptable for one reason or another. During all but two of those years of unsuccessful proposals, Rick Scalera was the mayor of Hudson, so now that it looks like the problem may be reaching a resolution, he felt compelled last night to point out that the space requirements he had been working with were far greater than the space that the police department and the Unified Court System now seem willing to accept. The building at 701 Union Street is 12,000 square feet--6,000 for the court; 6,000 for the police. "Good to hear now that the court and police are willing to compromise," said Scalera. He then commented that he didn't think that the police, who now have 4,500 square feet in their building on Warren Street, were going to be satisfied with 6,000 square feet.

On a related topic, the Council also approved reimbursing Hudson Community Development & Planning Agency the $71,158.61 HCDPA has paid to Spacesmith for developing the design for the now abandoned senior center project. That amount represents 85 percent of the outstanding invoices from Spacesmith. Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) objected to paying 85 percent of what was billed when only 50 percent of the work had been done. He protested, "We asked for a design at a certain level, and we got a design at a different level"--one the City couldn't afford. Alderman Cappy Pierro (Fifth Ward)--in what seemed like an example of a kind of municipal financing shell game--pointed out that if the City didn't reimburse HCDPA the $71,158.61, HCDPA wouldn't be able to contribute $100,000 to the current plan to repurpose part of the Armory, owned by the Galvan Foundation, as a senior center.

When the resolution to reimburse HCDPA came to a vote, only Friedman and Alderman Nick Haddad (First Ward) voted nay.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK

As Promised . . .

Here is the breakdown of votes. According to a reliable source, this was one of the lowest voter turnout rates ever for a school district election.

Click on the chart to enlarge it.

School District Election Results

The 2013-2014 HCSD budget passed by a vote of 614 yes and 431 no.

The winners in the race for the two vacant seats on the Board of Education are Tiffany Martin Hamilton and Lynn Lee. The candidates' totals are: Hamilton 506; Lee 404; Joseph Carr 380; Scott diMonda 273; Jaclyn Bruntfield 270.

The breakdown of the vote by polling place will follow.

It's Five O'Clock . . .

Have you voted yet in the school district election? The polls are open until 9 p.m.

Hudson and the River

While government officials fret about a stalled LWRP and wring their hands over the urgent need to repair or replace the Ferry Street bridge, there is a group with a simpler plan for connecting to the river.

The Hudson Sloop Club sailed onto many people's radar last Friday when the group hosted a fish fry at Basilica Hudson followed by a lecture by Dr. Guy McPherson on the subject of local resiliency for the 21st century. 

The goal of the Hudson Sloop Club is to bring the Hudson River back into the daily life of our community, and the club's organizers are doing it by restoring and building a fleet of boats and providing education in seamanship, boat safety, and the river's ecology, history, and protection for the future. This spring, the Hudson Sloop Club offered ten-week workshops, which started in April, in wooden boat building. An afternoon workshop for children is conducted in collaboration with Kite's Nest and coordinates with an evening workshop for adults. Both workshops contribute to the construction of a twelve-foot sailing skiff.

To learn more about the goals and programs of the Hudson Sloop Club, visit their website. To learn about sloop club activities and events, visit their Facebook page. To support the sloop club's effort and become a member, visit Indiegogo.

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 21

Gossips' observance of National Preservation Month continues, and there is still time to catch up on the search. Identify, by address, the location of the architectural details featured and submit your answers to Gossips at the end of the month. Here's the detail for today.

Weekend Parking News

Good news for weekend visitors! Once again, overnight alternate side of the street parking has been suspended for the summer months. Overnight, from Friday to Saturday and from Saturday to Sunday, vehicles may park on both sides of the street. On Sunday night, cars need to be on the odd-numbered side if the date of the next day is odd and on the even-numbered side if it is even. The suspension took effect on May 3, but no one bothered to make it known to the public. It continues through the summer and fall, to the end of October. 

Get Ready to Vote

Tomorrow, we in the Hudson City School District vote on the proposed 2013-2014 budget and select two members of Board of Education. 

The total budget proposed for 2013-2014 is $43,416,302--an increase of 1,865,587, or 4.49 percent more than the budget for 2012-2013. The revenue that must come from the tax levy has risen 4.79 percent, from $19,708,416 to $20,652,449. An informational flier distributed by HCSD attributes 99.43 percent of the increase over last year's budget to "mandated employee costs." 

There are five candidates running for two vacant seats on the Board of Education. 

• Jaclyn Rose Bruntfield, 27, who lives on Glenwood Boulevard in Hudson
• Joseph E. Carr, 57, who lives on Edmonds Lane in Hudson
• Scott D. diMonda, 44, who lives on Arthur Avenue in Greenport
• Tiffany Martin Hamilton, 42, who lives on upper Warren Street in Hudson (incumbent)
• Lynn E. Lee, 59, who lives on County Route 14 in Greenport

Lynn Sloneker provides the links to opening statements made by each of the candidates during last Tuesday's candidate forum on her blog Unmuffled. The entire forum has been archived and can be heard online at WGXC.

A Fitting Day for Falafel

Today--Monday, May 20--Park Falafel & Pizza is offering its own version of the Golden Arches' McTeacher's Night. Like McTeacher's Night, Park Falafel will donate 20 percent of its sales to Montgomery C. Smith Intermediate School--for field trips and other student activities. Unlike McTeacher's Night, the event lasts all day, teachers don't have to do the serving, and no one has to make unhealthy food choices.

  

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 20

May 20, Detail 20. Our observance of National Preservation Month continues. Readers are encouraged to go out, look at the historic buildings that surround us, and locate the architectural details featured here. This is the detail for today--a gift for loyal Gossips readers.

Historic Buildings, Present Day Needs

There are two projects in Hudson, at different stages of development, that involve additions and adaptations to significant historic buildings: the Columbia County courthouse and the Hudson Opera House. In both cases, the changes are necessitated by requirements of building use in the 21st century.

At the Columbia County courthouse, many things are happening. Handicapped ramps are being constructed at the front of the building, a two-story addition with an elevator and public bathrooms is being constructed at the back of the building, a new heating and cooling system is being installed.

Public Works commissioner David Robinson was justifiably proud of the exterior design. On the front elevation, the ramp balustrades replicate the detail of the original building and appear --in the elevation drawings, at least--to blend seamlessly into the facade. The new addition to the Beaux Arts building designed by Warren and Wetmore meets the standards of compatibility--mass, texture, continuity--yet there is differentiation. It is clear where the original building ends and the later addition begins. 

When the plans were presented to the Historic Preservation Commission, the commissioners seemed impressed not only by the designs but by Robinson's knowledge of and admiration for the historic building. Although the plans presented were only for the exterior, Robinson's obvious respect for the building and his reverent statements about the main staircase and the light coming through the window in the south facade were reassuring and encouraged confidence on the decisions being made about changes to the interior of the building. For this reason, there was surprise and disappointment--and indeed some outrage--when it was discovered by someone living in close proximity to the courthouse that interior walls at the main entrance to the building have been demolished.

As shown in these pictures, which were taken a couple of weeks ago, the east wall of the vestibule has been demolished, and the large marble plaque, which creates symmetry in the vestibule with a similar commemorative plaque on the opposite wall, has been removed and remounted, centered, on the west wall of the lobby, just inside the vestibule. The east wall of the lobby has also been demolished.  

The reason for the demolition is the desire to move the security checkpoint and metal detector out of the lobby, where it took up half the space. The idea is that when you enter the building, instead of going straight ahead toward the monumental marble staircase, you will go to the left, into a side room where you will pass through security, and then exit that room and enter the lobby through a door in the east wall.

The changes are meant to restore the lobby to its intended function as a lobby by moving the security checkpoint to a side room, but critics see the changes as destroying the integrity of the interior space and spoiling the symmetry and the progression of spaces people entering the building were meant to experience.

Architecturally, the courthouse is one of the most significant buildings in Hudson--indeed, in Columbia County. It was designed by the famous architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore at about the same time they were working on the design for Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Advocates for the building believe that there was a relationship between the main entry spaces of the courthouse and the entry spaces at Grand Central, that Warren and Wetmore may have "tried out" some of their concepts of spatial relationships with the design for our courthouse.

The courthouse is a contributing structure in the Hudson Historic District listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the locally designated Union-Allen-South Front Street Historic District. Back in 2004, soon after Hudson's preservation law was adopted and the Historic Preservation Commission created, there was an effort by the HPC to designate the courthouse as a local landmark--a designation that would have extended protection and review to the public spaces inside the building. This initiative was foiled by the late Gerald Simons, then chair of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, and, at the time, some believed that Simons was acting at the urging of then Hudson mayor Rick Scalera. 

In the intervening decade, the embattled HPC never again tried to give individual designation to the courthouse. In 2006, however, the Common Council stood up to a request from county government to exempt the courthouse from the wide-ranging Union-Allen-South Front Street Historic District created that year. As a consequence, any exterior alteration to the building requires review by the HPC, but interior alterations do not. Had the courthouse been individually designated as a local landmark, plans for the interior would also have come before the HPC, and a more public discussion might have resulted in different solution to the problem of accommodating 21st-century needs for security within an architecturally significant early 20th-century building.

The Hudson Opera House is struggling with its own challenges of adapting a historic building to 21st-century uses. Like the courthouse, the opera house is a contributing structure in a National Register historic district and a locally designated historic district, but unlike the courthouse, the opera house's restoration, which has been going on for close to twenty years, has been a much more public process. Because the financing for the opera house restoration has involved grant money from state and federal sources, the New York State Historic Preservation Office and the National Parks Service must approve plans and the work as it is being done. 

The Hudson Opera House is now embarking on its final phase of restoration: reopening the second floor as a performance and assembly space. This requires--for ADA compliance--an elevator, which will be housed in a tower constructed behind the building, connected to the building and differentiated from it by a glass "hyphen"--a recommended strategy for providing elevators in historic buildings. This month, the proposed elevator tower, which has already been approved at the state and federal levels, started the review process at the local level with the three agencies involved: the Planning Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission, and the Zoning Board of Appeals.

On May 8, as Gossips reported, the elevator tower project was presented to the Planning Commission for site plan review. The Planning Commission was concerned about visibility for vehicles approaching City Hall Place on Cherry Alley and about noise from a transformer to installed on the site and requested more information about decibel levels and sight lines.

On May 10, the elevator tower project came before the Historic Preservation Commission. In the preliminary review, from which two of the seven members of the HPC reclused themselves (Peggy Polenberg, because she is on the HOH board, and Jack Alvarez, because he has a current business relationship with one of the people presenting the application), two of the five remaining--Tony Thompson and Scott Baldinger--had concerns about the design. 

Observing that the south facade of the opera house was "very visible and very beautiful," Baldinger expressed the opinion that the proposed tower "upstaged" the facade. Thompson wanted to know why the tower had period windows and why there were lintels where windows might have been, concluding, "This thing is very different from the opera house, and sticking a few things on it doesn't make it so."

After the discussion, it was decided that the application was incomplete because there were no renderings that showed the elevator tower in its context from different directions.

On May 15, the elevator tower proposal was presented to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Area variances are needed because the tower will come right up to the sidewalk on the east side, as the opera house itself does, and to within a foot or two of the alley on the south side. The ZBA accepted the application as complete and scheduled a public hearing for Wednesday, June 19, at 6 p.m.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 19

Gossips' observance of National Preservation Month continues. Look up, look down, look carefully. Identify all the architectural details and submit your answers to Gossips when the month of May is over. Here is today's detail.

Great Expectations

The Classic Car & Motorcycle Show was supposed to attract a hundred cars and hordes of people. At the height of the show, according to reports, there were sixteen cars on display. 

At 3:30, Warren Street was reopened from Third to City Hall Place. Between 4:30 and 5, all the barriers were removed.

Inside Fish & Game

Along with the link to his article in the New York Observer, Sam Pratt has published on his blog photographs of the interior of Fish & Game taken by Laetitia Hussain.

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 18

It promises to be a great weekend for being outdoors. For those readers planning to venture out in search of the architectural details featured in Gossips' observance of National Preservation Month, Gossips has prepared a "walking list" of the details presented thus far, which can be downloaded here. This is the detail for today.

New (Temporary) Look for the Courthouse

Remember Suburbia as it was depicted in the movie Edward Scissorhands? The new addition to the Columbia County courthouse has temporarily taken on that same cotton candy fantasy quality.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK

Perfect Ten Awarded $10,000 Grant

Paula Forman and Kate Moore announced yesterday that Perfect Ten After School has won a $10,000 grant. The winner of the grant was determined by weeks of online voting. Perfect Ten's campaign to get supporters to vote every morning paid off. The program that provides academic and social support for girls from age 10 through high school graduation was the clear winner.  

Ear to the Ground

In spite of efforts by business owners and Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) to get Mayor William Hallenbeck to rescind the mass gathering permit allowing Joe Fiero to close the 300 block of Warren Street to traffic on Saturday, by late afternoon today "No Parking" signs lined the street from Third to Fourth.

According to Gossips sources, the mayor finally agreed, after appeals from Friedman and Common Council president Don Moore, to ask that cars and motorcycles be parked only on the north side of the street, leaving a traffic lane on the south side of the street open for cars traveling east, but Fiero was having none of it. Having gotten his mass gathering permit, he refused to comply with the mayor's request.

There is ample evidence that Fiero's claim, reported in today's Register-Star, that he "had spoken to everyone he could think of and gotten a favorable response" is at best an exaggeration and at worst a complete fabrication. Unfortunately, John Mason reported that the First Presbyterian Church was going to sell food during the event. Gossips has it on good authority that this is not the case. Apparently, Fiero told Mason that "the church" was going to sell food, and Mason assumed "the church" was the First Presbyterian Church, since it's the only church in the 300 block of Warren Street. It seems more likely, to Gossips at least, that "the church" Fiero referred to is the Rock Solid Church, located on Union Street and City Hall Place.

The real question, of course, is whether or not the mass gathering permit should have been issued in the first place. This is what the city code has to say about the approval process for mass gathering permits:

Subparagraph (3) is the important one here: "Does the proposed special event unreasonably interfere with the rights of the neighbors?" The answer to that would seem to be a resounding yes.

Addendum: So far as I could see, checking out the event a couple of times throughout the afternoon, no church was selling food. 
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK  

Spring Is CDBG Time

Every year, there is a new round of grants in the CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) program, and every year, the City of Hudson applies for money for one project or another. If memory serves, the last time Hudson was awarded CDBG money was in 2010, when the City received a grant of $400,000 to build a senior center, which, of course, hasn't happened yet. Whether or not the City still has access to that money and can apply it to refurbishing the officers' hall at the Armory as a senior center has yet to be determined, but last night there was a public hearing to find out what projects the community would like to see pursued in the 2013 round of the CDBG program.

A common theme was sidewalks. Off Warren Street in both directions and above Park Place, Hudson's sidewalks are in pretty deplorable shape, exacerbated by the fact that property owners are responsible for the care and keeping of their own sidewalks and individual efforts at sidewalk improvement regularly result in treacherously uneven sidewalks. Not a good thing for a community that wants to think of itself as walkable.

Linda Mussmann pitched the idea of new sidewalks along the stretch of Columbia Street where Time & Space Limited is located, arguing that "that strip of sidewalk links to all kinds of stuff." She cited DSS, the county health building, Columbia Opportunities, and the library as examples of public facilities people walk to along that sidewalk and talked of the number of strollers that get pushed along that sidewalk.

Supervisor Sarah Sterling (First Ward) recalled a situation (now corrected) on Third Street just north of Warren where the sidewalk had been missing at a designated school bus stop and suggested a project to "fix sidewalks and make better school bus stops."

Carrie Haddad suggested that a broader approach was needed for sidewalks--one that looked at the whole city. She suggested that, in addition to sidewalk improvement, Hudson needed public bathrooms and named two spots where they might be located: in the pocket park next to Mexican Radio and in the PARC Park across from the Hudson Opera House. Haddad also pointed out that there were forty tree wells throughout the city where trees have been removed and have not been replaced and suggested a project to plant trees in those spots.

Returning to the topic of sidewalks, Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) said that he was working on a proposal to create special assessment districts throughout the city to address the need for sidewalk repair. Districts would be identified for sidewalk improvements, and the property owners would pay for those improvements over time in their property taxes.

Former mayor and now Fifth Ward supervisor Rick Scalera called sidewalk improvement a "highly complex issue" before pitching what he considered a priority: replacing the Ferry Street bridge. Stressing its importance to waterfront development, Scalera opined, "No developer would go down there if there is only one way of access," and shared his assessment that "the bridge problems are more than just planking."

Mention of the Ferry Street bridge prompted Common Council president Don Moore to share the information that CSX is willing to turn the bridge over to the City but "we need to raise money." He pointed out that the amount of money needed to replace the bridge--either $1.5 or $2.5 million, he couldn't remember which--was significantly more than the maximum available through the CDBG program, which is $400,000 for a single purpose grant and $600,000 for a comprehensive grant. Moore revealed that the City's application for a grant from STEP (Strategic Transportation Enhancement Program) for the Ferry Street bridge had not been successful, but Bill Roehr of TGW Consultants indicated that there would be an opportunity to apply for a TEP (Transportation Enhancement Program) grant for funds to replace the bridge in August. 

Before a decision is made about the project for which the City will seek CDBG funding, there will be more opportunities for the public to share their ideas. A second hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 6, at 6 p.m. Moore also suggested the informal Common Council meeting on Monday, June 10, and the Common Council Economic Development Committee meeting on Thursday, June 20, as opportunities for the Council to hear public opinion.

Addendum: In 2012, the City of Hudson applied for but did not receive $600,000 from the CDBG program to install 2,700 feet of water main and forty-seven service connections on Riverledge Road and Joslen Place.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK

See! Save! Celebrate! Detail 17

Gossips' observance of National Preservation Month continues. Take the Gossips challenge. Identify the location, by address, of all thirty-one architectural details presented here during May, and submit your answers to Gossips at the end of the month. Here is the detail for today.

Not to Be Missed

Sam Pratt, journalist and known vegetarian, has an article about Hudson's newest restaurant, Fish & Game, in the New York Observer: "Zak Pelaccio Cutting the Fat, Glazing Turnips Instead."

Of Interest

Nathan Mayberg reports, in today's Register-Star, on the legal costs so far incurred in the still unresolved case of sexual harassment charges made against Hudson High School principal Tom Gavin by HCSD superintendent Maria Suttmeier: "District spends $34K in legal fees on Gavin investigation."

"Gloriosky!"

John Mason follows up on the controversy over American Glory's Classic Car & Motorcycle Show in today's Register-Star: "Car show causes uproar in city." Some quotes from the article are worthy of note. Mayor William Hallenbeck, speaking about the business owners who have asked him to rescind the mass gathering permit: "I haven't heard any reasonable arguments other than they don't feel their businesses will be better off. I can't get into the personal issues of people who may not get along with Glory." Joe Fiero, complaining about the negative reaction to his plan: "I'm trying to do something right. I've been doing this since I came to town, and I keep getting squashed."