Enough Already

Wrangling the comments on this blog has become more work than writing it and certainly more thankless. I started The Gossips of Rivertown and have kept it going for more than sixteen years to keep people informed about what is happening in Hudson. It was never my intention to provide a platform for people to snipe at each other. Let it be known that henceforward, unless a comment directly relates to the content of the post, it will not be published.   

Morris Dancing in Hudson

On its 49th annual tour, "From the Hudson to the Hoosic," the Morris dancing troupe American Traveling Morrice will be in our fair city.

The dancers will be here on Friday, August 14, for a "Walking Tour of Hudson," performing at three different sites:

• 11:00 a.m.--Promenade Hill
• 12:00 noon--Rick's Point in Henry Hudson Riverfront Park
• 1:15 p.m.--Hudson Train Station

American Travelling Morrice performing in Manhattan on July 25, 2024

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Reminder: Deadline Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 11, is the deadline for submitting written comments to the Planning Board about the redevelopment plan proposed by the Hudson Housing Authority. Comments can be submitted by email to the Planning Board clerk Linda Fenoff at lfenoff@cityofhudson.org.

Yesterday, a petition was launched, asking the Planning Board "to take a genuine hard look at the soil, the structures, the environmental record, and the effect on the Second Ward, and Hudson" of the proposed project, and asking the Common Council "to examine whether this plan serves the city's social and fiscal future." That petition can be found here.

Clarification: Tuesday, August 11, may not actually be the deadline for submitting written comments. Written comments will be accepted until the public hearing is closed, which has not happened yet. Since it is not clear when the public hearing will be closed, it is advisable to submit your comments as soon as possible. The Planning Board will hear oral comments on the project from people present in the room at its meeting on Tuesday night, which takes place at City Hall. The meeting is a hybrid. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.

Meetings and Events in the Week Ahead

As we move into and through the second week in August, here is what's happening.  

• On Monday, August 10, the Common Council Infrastructure and Code Committee meets at 5:30 p.m. Despite the name of the committee, the meeting consists only of a report from Superintendent of Public Works Rob Perry, since Code Enforcement Officer Nick Fox has chosen to make his reports to the Safety Committee. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
• On Tuesday, August 11, the Planning Board meets at 6:00 p.m. Although the site plan review of the Hudson Housing Authority's redevelopment proposal is the business before the Planning Board on everyone's mind, there are several other things on the agenda for the meeting: the parking lot on Washington Street for Pocketbook Hudson, a photovoltaic carport at Basilica Hudson, and three three-unit structures for Mount Ray Estates. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely. 

• On Wednesday, August 12, the Housing Trust Fund Board meets at 5:30 p.m. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely. 
• Also on Wednesday, August 12, Waterfront Wednesdays features the Dustbowl Faeries. The event begins at 4:00 p.m. and continues until dusk. The performance by the Dustbowl Faeries takes place at 6:00 p.m.

• On Thursday, August 13, the Common Council Legal Committee meets at 6:00 p.m. An agenda for the meeting is not yet available. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
• On Friday, August 14, the Historic Preservation Commission meets at 10:00 a.m. The meeting is a hybrid, taking place in person at City Hall and on Teams. Click here for the link to join the meeting remotely.
• Also on Friday, August 14, there is a beach party to celebrate the season finale of Summer Camp at Oakdale Lake. The party begins at 11:00 a.m. There will be water games, a talent show, and the "legendary tug of war," as well as a cookout serving up hamburgers and hot dogs. 

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Happening Next Week

The Bard Music Festival Mozart and His World is happening right now, and, for the first time, one of the concerts in the series will take place here in Hudson, at the First Presbyterian Church, on Wednesday, August 12.  

Titled Mozart and Religion, this special community event offers a sampling of Mozart's sacred music, dating from "God Is Our Refuge," a motet composed by Mozart when he was just nine years old, to his "Ave verum corpus." These will be heard alongside Gregorio Allegri's Miserere, a work strictly guarded by the Vatican until Mozart transcribed it from memory when he was fourteen; J. S. Bach's funeral motet "Fürchte dich nicht"; an Epiphany anthem by Mozart's student Thomas Attwood, the organist of London's St. Paul's Cathedral; and liturgical choral works by Joseph Haydn, with whom Mozart shared a close friendship and deep-seated mutual reverence.

The concert, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is free, but reservations are required, which can be made here.

LWRP Redux

On July 28, the Common Council passed a resolution authorizing the mayor to submit an application to the New York State Department of State Environmental Protection Fund for a Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (LWRP) grant. The resolution explains the purpose of the grant in this way:

[T]he goal is to revise the City’s existing LWRP, incorporating new developments in parks and public access points in the past decade, while also addressing climate concerns and resilience features, pollution, and waterfront development pressures. The City is in need of a new plan to guide thoughtful and sustainable development along the waterfront that is cohesive and allows public uses and access while also increasing economic development activity and resiliency methods. What will come out of this process is a locally appropriate, climate resilient zoning and land use plan that will connect residents and tourists to the waterfront while increasing jobs, business activity, and unify varying plans across the waterfront boundary. The City of Hudson's Hudson River waterfront boundary extends approximately 1.5 miles from the Greenport Conservation Area wetlands south to Greenport, NY. . . . 

If the City is successful in getting the grant and embarks on revising the existing LWRP, it will be Hudson's third try at getting a properly adopted LWRP. This post, published in June 2013, provides some background about the fate of Hudson's first two attempts: "Our Foundering and Bewildering LWRP." That post and all its comments are recommended for anyone who wants to understand the history of Hudson's LWRP.

In 2013, when the post was written, there was uncertainty about two things: (1) if the LWRP had actually been submitted to the Department of State (DOS); (2) if the transfer of ownership of a parcel of land south of the dock from Holcim to the City of Hudson was in fact a condition for the DOS to review the document. In 2016, when Mayor Tiffany Martin re-created the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee in an effort to revise the LWRP and get the DOS to review it, it was confirmed by the DOS that the document had never been submitted for review.

In 2016, something was also revealed about the land transfer. Probably beginning in early 2012, Cheryl Roberts, then the city attorney, was negotiating the transfer of land with Holcim's attorneys in Switzerland. Periodically, she would report at Common Council meetings on the progress of those negotiations. At some point, she reported that the negotiations had broken down, and the lawyers were no longer responding. In 2016, it was revealed that Colarusso, at the same time negotiating to buy Holcim's holdings in Greenport and Hudson, wanted that land to use as a staging area. The breakdown of Roberts' negotiations was concurrent with Colarusso's negotiations to buy the Holcim property. It is not unreasonable to believe that Colarusso's interests were in large part the reason the 2011 LWRP has never submitted and never approved by the DOS, although no one realized it at the time.

There is no doubt that something needs to be done about the LWRP. The LWRP adopted by the Common Council in 2011 makes it very clear that the use of the dock is a nonconforming conditional use, and there should be no expansion or intensification of the dock operations beyond what existed in November 2011, three years before Colarusso acquired the property. Yet last year, when the Planning Board was considering the conditional use permit for Colarusso's dock operations, they were advised by their attorney, Victoria Polidoro, that the LWRP was not legally binding because a map of the city's Local Waterfront Revitalization Area was not on file with the Department of State. 

The current and ongoing effort to amend the code to define the level of activity that existed in 2011 when the code was adopted--the level that, to quote the code, "shall not be enlarged, extended, or placed in a different portion of the lot or parcel of land occupied by such use on the effective date of this chapter, nor shall any external evidence of such use be increased by any means whatsoever"--is meeting with reluctance and downright resistance both from members of the Planning Board and from members of the Common Council. Interestingly, every meeting of the Planning Board and the Common Council at which there is a chance the amendment might be discussed is attended by one of Colarusso's team of lawyers.

If the City does get the grant and work begins on a revising and updating the LWRP, it is not clear what we can expect. The zeal to protect the waterfront and the environment from industrial uses, the zeal that sustained a seven-year-long battle against St. Lawrence Cement and informed the language of the LWRP, seems, inexplicably, to have waned. One thing is for certain, though. An attorney representing Colarusso will be present at every LWRP meeting and work session to ensure the interests of Colarusso take priority over the interests of the residents of Hudson and of other businesses and enterprises at the waterfront.

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Ear to the Ground

Gossips has received word that Lloyd Koedding's vehicles, one of which allegedly serves as his residence, have been moved from the municipal parking lot behind City Hall and are now in the parking lot at Fairview Plaza in Greenport, near Planet Fitness.

This was not Gossips' source, but the news of the relocation was reported this morning by Columbia County Morning News.

Does this mean that Koedding, who ran for Hudson mayor in 2025 and challenged Sonja Okun to be the Democratic candidate for Third Ward supervisor earlier this year, is now a Greenport resident?

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An Account of the Closing

Steve Barnes reports in the Times Union today about the closing of Hudson Valley Fisheries: "Steelhead farm Hudson Valley Fisheries abruptly closes." In the article, the closing is attributed to "financial instability." The following is quoted from the article:  

A statement from Hudson Valley Fisheries to the Times Union on Monday said multiple factors contributed to the closure decision, including inadequate water supply and higher prices from fuel costs and tariffs that made it financially unsustainable to continue doing business.

Update from City Hall

After this morning's outage, City Hall just made the following announcement:

Please be advised that City Hall's internet and phones are now fully functional after Mid-Hudson Fiber's outage reported earlier this morning.

Of Interest

Hudson Common Sense has published a new editorial which is worthy attention: "The Fourth Quadrant of Waste."

Expanding the Crusade for Literacy

From 2016 to 2024, Peter Meyer ran an in-school journalism program in the Hudson City School District called School Life News. The program showed measurable results in improving students' literacy skills, but in 2024, former HCSD superintendent Juliette Pennyman put an end to the program. 

"Mr. Peter" bidding farewell to fifth-graders at Montgomery C. Smith in March 2024

Now, Meyer has launched a "Race to Literacy" campaign. offering his School Life News program to other area school districts. The press release that follows explains.

School Life Media (SLM), the 15-year-old non-profit dedicated to school improvement, and its popular and successful in-school literacy program, School Life News (SLN) have launched a “race to literacy” postcard campaign, offering school districts within a 40-mile radius of SLM’s home in Hudson, NY, a chance to help boost their students’ State English Language Arts (ELA) grade level proficiency scores. The campaign reached out to 40 schools with grade-level proficiency levels of 40 percent and below, says Sarah Nolan, SLM’s Director of Social Media, who compiled the list using State education data. 

“We reached out to the schools with drawings by local artist Bobby Atwell, who creates his own literacy lessons for his grandkids,” says SLM Board president and Hudson native John Cody, who has been on the board since its inception in 2012. “For our postcards he has a racecar made of #2 pencils speeding across the Higher Test Scores finish line.”

Both SLM and SLN are the brainchild of Peter Meyer, a former News Editor of Time and Life magazines, reporter and Manuscript Editor at Harvard’s Education Next, and a former member of Hudson’s Board of Education. 

“I tried to merge the best of our curricular thinkers, like content guru E.D. Hirsch (“the more you know, the more you can know”),” says Meyer, with what he thought were the best practices for hands-on learning: journalism. “With much new research and interest in how young minds work,” concludes Meyer, “it turns out that journalism is one of the best classroom exercises to build working memory, which is the engine of all learning.” 

SLN, which trains teachers in using its unique program, has been especially successful at making students “better readers,” with over 3,000 students–third through ninth grades–taking some or part of SLN’s comprehensive and detailed 20+ lesson program since 2016. “One fifth grade class (150 students) raised its ELA scores by 11 points,” boasts Meyer.  

“We saw real growth in the students’ ability to write non-fiction text,” says Mark Brenneman, principal of MC Smith Elementary School in Hudson. “SLN staff’s dedication and caring for our students made this program a complete success.” Says former fifth grade teacher Megan Sullivan, "My students were more eager to write and more attentive to details around them and in texts. Teaching students to be journalists is incredibly valuable as they grow as writers and imaginative learners."  

“The global reach of journalism’s interests and applications,” says Meyer, “has allowed us to access our children’s insatiable curiosity about, and interest in, anyone or thing. Popular assignments for these junior journalists include `an interview with my shoe,’ a press conference with Tate the barber, and a close reading of a New York Times story about making robotic stick bugs.”   

“SLM delivers evidence-based instruction on gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information,” concludes recently retired Hudson superintendent Maria Suttmeier. “The program gained strong support and respect from our teachers.” 

Words to Learn By 

“Learn to read, you will be forever free." —Frederick Douglass  

"The best education for the best is the best education for us all."  

—Robert M. Hutchins, President, University of Chicago (1929-1945)

“Excellence does not happen by accident.”  —Aristotle  

A Message from City Hall

City Hall has made the following announcement:

Mid-Hudson Fiber is experiencing a widespread internet outage, which they've been working to remedy since 6 a.m. City Hall is open, but able to offer only limited services as all computer systems and phones are down. We will provide updates from Mid-Hudson Fiber as they become available.