Of Interest

There's lots to read in today's Register-Star.

The Mayor Speaks Topping the list is a My View by Richard Scalera, Hudson mayor, about the LWRP: "Public had ample chance to comment." In the opening paragraph, Scalera states: "I would venture to say that Hudson’s LWRP has gone through more public comment than any other LWRP in the history of New York state’s coastal program. Even before the first draft of the LWRP was released in 2007, the city held six public workshops and nearly 50 meetings with interested stakeholders." It's interesting to note that all of those six public workshops took place from 2006 to 2007, during a period when Scalera was briefly out of office. Since 2008, when Scalera returned to office, the opportunities for the public and even for the Common Council to see the document have been few and far between. In fact, it took more than a year--from January 2010 to May 2011--for the Common Council to get the chance to see how city attorney Cheryl Roberts and Frank Fish of BFJ had categorized the last round of public comments and proposed to respond to them on the Council's behalf. One wonders too about the "nearly 50 meetings with interested stakeholders." How many of them were with Holicm and O&G?

What the mayor fails to grasp is that it doesn't matter how many opportunities for public comment there are if those comments are never adequately addressed. 

The Vet Speaks Gary M. Cane, the vet who treated Romy (whose full name we now know is Romeo) at the Animal Clinic of Hillsdale after the chocolate Lab and his littermate were sucked through the culvert in South Bay, talks about the incident: "Vet: Address culvert danger."  Cane offers his help in creating and installing signs to warn people about the culvert that has already claimed at least four dogs' lives and is quoted in the article as saying, “I guarantee that just because of the "p" word [private property], if you are harboring a dangerous situation you should make it known that it is a dangerous situation.” 

The article ends, not surprisingly, with these two statements: "O&G and Holcim could not be reached for comment. The city and county expressed that they do not have any power in the matter of resolving the issue."

The picture above shows Romeo (center) with his littermate, Tillie, who drowned in the culvert.

The BOE Begins There's also a rather sketchy report by Audra Jornov about last night's budget workshop: "HCSD begins tackling budget." The article contains what we believe is a misquote from BOE vice president Jeff Otty. Jornov reports: “'I will not go back to the budget,' Otty said of the recently proposed budget. He feels that it would be a waste of BOE time and the voters’ time." What Gossips heard him say, talking about making a decision to schedule a revote on the budget, was: "I will not go through this process if we are not going to have a revote."

Gossips' report on last night's meeting will follow shortly.