A Day for Changes of Heart?

Yesterday, Common Council President Don Moore changed his mind and decided to release the proposed final versions of the LWRP and GEIS today rather than keeping them from the public until after a special meeting that has yet to be scheduled. Tonight there may be a chance for another change of heart.

Last Tuesday--at about the same time that Moore was announcing his plan to hold Hudson's waterfront documents in camera for two weeks--the HCSD Board of Education voted 4 to 3 to adopt the $41 million budget that the voters of the Hudson City School District had just voted 3 to 1 to reject. One of the reasons cited for ignoring the results from the polls was that only 18 percent of the voters (1,673) came out to vote. Of course, low voter turnout has never deterred the HCSD BOE in the past. On February 14, 2007--remembered by some as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre--only 647 people--fewer than 7 percent of the voters--made it to the polls during a thoroughly wretched winter storm, but the outcome of that vote was considered a sufficient mandate to commit the district to a $30 million capital project.

Tonight the Board of Education has the chance to rescind its May 17 vote. There's some question about whether or not the vote was legal, since it was done before the popular vote had been certified. (Apparently, it's still not certified.) In order to rescind the earlier vote, one of the four board members who voted to adopt the proposed but rejected budget (Emil Meister, Jeff Otty, Mary Daly, or Peter Merante) needs to make a motion to rescind the vote and then change his or her position in a new vote.

Tonight's BOE meeting gives the voters another chance--this time in person--to tell the BOE that a 9.8 percent increase in the tax levy is intolerable and unacceptable and they need to come up with a better budget. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Hudson High School cafeteria.