The definitive answer came yesterday from Common Council president Don Moore, who, in a comment on Gossips, provided this information: "The rail company, which took over from CSX earlier this year, is doing repairs to switches and rail." Moore also sent this photograph, taken just east of one of the photographs published by Gossips, which shows the new rails stacked along the access road next to the tracks.
Exactly how is this different from what the Furgarians are asking?
ReplyDeleteThe only difference is that Furgary has the greater claim. The people's riparian rights are a thousand-year old privilege, continued without interruption in New York state's common law.
Is AMTRAK renting the land? Nope, we were told that "the City of Hudson is not a landlord" (Falkenheimer excepted for no compelling reason).
Is AMTRAK using the land gratis, when the Furgarians and NDTBA begged to pay for a lease and provide their own insurance? The group was wooing the support of state representatives, in hopes of getting the legislature's permission as the law provides.
(Not that the City of Hudson ever honored any state laws governing the waterfront: previous illegal sale of the lot now in question; illegal lease for the HPBA; illegal siting of its waste water treatment plant on state land; Falkenheimer using our dock for years without any lease; serial infractions of state law by Falkenheimer ever since, which are ignored by the city; waterfront park clearing and engineering without DEC or ACOE permission; fraudulent acquisition of funds for the new docks, and more.)
Now AMTRAK gets for free what the city's own residents may not enjoy? It's outrageous. It's mean.
"How Will You Know If You Don't Ask?"
ReplyDeleteA question for city officials:
By what legal arrangement is AMTRAK currently clearing and using the city's waterfront property?
such obvious disdain for public property by all involved
ReplyDeleteThe "full enjoyment" of lands below the high water line, along a public watercourse, is not a privilege, it's a federally protected right.
ReplyDeleteMight the two (new) mooring bouys, just off shore, provide a clue to the real motive for the clandestine clearing?
ReplyDeleteThey're as related to that clearing as our Furgary docks are related to it, which is not at all.
DeleteYour wrong guess just comes back to bite us.