"Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear"

There was a time, not too long ago, when a Common Council meeting was as likely as not to devolve into shouting, and last night's Council meeting, which lasted for two hours, brought back those days. Tempers flared and voices were raised more than once as the meeting wore on.    

Comptroller's Audit Things started out calmly enough with city treasurer Eileen Halloran commenting on the findings and recommendations of the audit done recently by the NYS Comptroller's Office. The auditors had, she explained, sampled 5 percent of the total receipts and found that "everything worked as it should: all transactions were deposited where they should be." The auditors had a problem, however, with the time-honored practice in Hudson of the city clerk's office "taking in funds and keeping them," since the city charter indicates the treasurer's office should be doing this. The auditors also criticized the practice of having each department order its own receipt books, since there is no way to know that receipts were not given for payments never received. The latter problem, Halloran said, will be remedied by having the treasurer's office order numbered receipt stock which will be distributed to the departments and the numbers recorded. In this way, the treasurer's office will know if any receipts are missing.

Halloran, who is running for Fifth Ward alderman and not seeking reelection for a fourth term as treasurer, declared that she was satisfied with the outcome of the audit. "It's a good audit to go out on," she said.

MAI Update Marina Abramovic and Serge Le Borgne, the director of the Marina Abramovic Institute, made a presentation to the Council about the status of the project. Some things have changed: Abramovic has donated the building to her not-for-profit; the interior design for the building has been altered to create two new levels; the anticipated cost has risen to $20 million. Abramovic told the Council she wants to amass the $20 million from the small donations of many rather than large donations from "twenty or so directors from around the world." The first fundraising campaign will be launched on July 21 or 22.

Abramovic predicted that her institute will "change the local economy" in Hudson, comparing it with the impact that Robert Redford and the Sundance Film Festival have had on Park City, Utah, and the the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry has had on Bilbao, Spain. 

Le Borgne explained that from now until the end of 2015, when the building is expected to be functional, they will be "working on the building and working to raise money." He described it as a "long duration project."

After the presentation, when questions were invited, Alderman Ohrine Stewart (Fourth Ward) asked for clarification of the fees the institute would charge. When Abramovic was explaining that participants would be asked to "sign a contract to spend six hours at the institute," Stewart apparently misheard "six hours" as "six thousand [dollars]."

John Mason's account of the presentation appears in today's Register-Star: "Abramovic institute plans increase in size, cost."    

The Linear Park Two resolutions were introduced last night that will allow the development of the linear park proposed years ago by the PARC Foundation to go forward.

The park will extend from Columbia Street to State Street in the middle of the 300 block. In creating the design for the park, it was discovered that some of the land required, along the edge of the two-level parking lot and under the metal stairs, belonged to Columbia County. One of the resolutions accepts the transfer of ownership of this strip of land; the other authorizes the mayor to enter into an agreement with the Untitled Foundation (a.k.a. the PARC Foundation) for the development of the linear park. Work on the park is expected to begin in the fall.

Police and Court Building There have been some changes in the plans for the adaptive reuse of 701 Union Street as the new police and court building, which, like the changes in design for MAI, involve increases in space and cost. It was with some exasperation that Alderman Nick Haddad (First Ward) explains that, after two months of working with the City on the plan, the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA) came to the conclusion in the past week that the building was 2,500 square feet too small to contain both the Hudson Police Department and the Hudson City Court. The plan is now to add an addition to the building which will provide 2,500 more square feet on the ground floor and another 2,500 square feet in the basement and will cost an anticipated $250,000 more than what had originally been estimated for the purchase and renovation of the building.

At the end of May, the Common Council authorized the mayor to enter into a purchase agreement with the owner of 701 Union Street which gave the City three months in which to do their due diligence and decide whether or not to enter into a contract to buy the building. That three months ends at the end of August. Mindful of that time frame, Council president Don Moore commented, "Costs have yet to be nailed down. The better part of valor is to take the plan and go to bid."

Although the Council took no official action last night, they seemed inclined to pursue the plan for relocating the police department and city court, provided that it could be achieved within the established budget. Cheryl Stuart, however, representing Citizens in Defense of Hudson, objected. She wanted to know if there would be a public hearing on the purchase of the building. She cited concerns for public safety. She spoke of the building's location just east of the railroad tracks, noting that plans for the transloading facility in Greenport are likely to increase the number of trains traveling along that track and asserting that the plan puts the police on the other side of the tracks from "the people who need police protection most." Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward), who lives on Worth Avenue, took issue with the notion that people living west of the railroad tracks needed police protection more than people living east of the railroad tracks.

Moore responded to Stuart's request for a public hearing by saying, "This is a public meeting to discuss this issue." Mayor Bill Hallenbeck wanted to know why Stuart had not availed herself of his "open door policy" to come and talk with him about her concerns. Both Haddad and Moore questioned why, since the plan to relocate the police station to 701 Union has been a topic of discussion for months, Stuart had only now taken an interest in it. When Stuart insisted that a public hearing was needed to solicit the opinions of the "general public," Friedman countered, "We represent the general public," and went on to say, "This isn't a black box. We're here out in the open."

Appraisals of City-owned Property Moore reported that the appraisals ordered by the City on the former Dunn warehouse on the waterfront and the vacant lot at Fourth and State streets had been received: $335,000 for the Dunn warehouse; $72,000 for the vacant lot. "We have to decide," Moore told the Council, "if we want to go through with an auction."

The Council, in November 2012, had agreed to sell these properties to balance the 2013 city budget, and $300,000 of anticipated revenue from the sale of these properties was written into the budget. Since then, however, more than $300,000 was realized from the auction of foreclosed properties, and, as Friedman reiterated last night, "the hole was plugged." Although he and several other members of the Council believe there is no longer a pressing need to sell these properties, Alderman Cappy Pierro (Fifth Ward) and Stewart are persistent in their position that if anticipated revenue from the sale of the buildings was written into the budget, the buildings must be sold.

The Council seems generally more willing to part with the vacant lot at Fourth and State streets than they are with the Dunn warehouse building, which is seen as a critical element in the development of the waterfront, but Claudia Bruce, co-founder of Time & Space Limited and Fourth Ward resident, didn't want them giving short shrift to the lot at Fourth and State. Asserting that the lot was "a vital piece of property for the Fourth Ward" and alluding to a proposal to pave the lot for yet another parking lot, Bruce ascended the platform to walk among the aldermen and distribute aerial photographs of the Fourth Ward (similar to the one reproduced here) to demonstrate how much of the Fourth Ward has already been paved over for parking lots.

When Moore asked Bruce to return to her seat, her partner, Linda Mussmann, took up the harangue. She told Moore, "You run a tight ship, but I'm not going to shut up." Mussmann's comments awakened old animosities when she made reference to "the old school" that once stood there--which was demolished in 1994, just days into Rick Scalera's first term as mayor of Hudson--and accused Scalera, seated across the aisle, of wanting to "get it as a parking lot for your boss, Eric Galloway." Scalera responded aggressively, "You wanna debate me? You go right ahead."

Civility restored, Maija Reed, also a Fourth Ward resident, appealed to the Council to consider "the aesthetics of the north side." Describing her neighborhood as "a community very devoid of trees," she expressed the hope that the lot could become "something lovely, with consideration for the people who live there."

Bringing the discussion to a close, Moore announced that the Finance Committee would examine the issue of money and decide if the sale of either or both properties is necessary.

Trash When it was approaching 9 p.m., and the meeting had gone on for close to two hours, a final topic was brought up by Friedman: the trash that accumulated and overflowed the trash barrels over the four-day Fourth of July weekend.

Friedman introduced the topic by saying that the City of Hudson had "failed its citizens and shop owners by not emptying the trash receptacles." "Merchants and entrepreneurs," said Friedman, "struggle mightily and succeed in spite of the City." From city government, he claimed, they get "nothing but excuses."

Hallenbeck responded by offering what seemed like excuses: DPW superintendent Rob Perry was on vacation; his people wanted to take the weekend off; DPW had three vacancies; only three or four of the usual crew of ten were working on Friday. He continued: "When all is good, the Council wants to pound its chest and take credit; but when something bad happens, City Hall gets blamed." To which Friedman responded, "You run the City. You run the show. You're responsible."

When Gossips suggested, from the audience, that with the holiday falling on Thursday, what happened could have been predicted, and DPW's limited resources should have been deployed to empty the public trash barrels instead of collecting the recyclables. It would have been better for residents to hang on to their recyclables for another week than to have main street littered with trash. Moore responded curtly that they could have done both and what happened was the result of a "supervisory error."

Trash photographs provided by Sarah Sterling