Last Night at City Hall

The issue that took up the greatest amount of time at last night's informal Common Council meeting was the Savoia. Patrons of the Savoia packed the house, along with residents and business owners on lower Warren Street concerned about two incidents that occurred in the vicinity of the bar a few weekends ago: gunshots at 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, and a brick hurled through the window at Verdigris in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Savoia owner Barbara Walthour and her supporters were vocal in their protests and testimonials; the opposition not so much, perhaps out of fear of being painted with the broad brush of racism that Walthour and her defenders were wielding, claiming that the Savoia had been "singled out for years because it is an African American owned bar."

The issue before the Common Council was a resolution, which hadn't been drafted yet, to appropriate funds for a CCTV camera, "which can look up and down the street," to be installed at Second and Warren streets. At the outset of the discussion, Alderman Tiffany Garriga (Second Ward), who reportedly had been opposed to a camera at that location in the past, expressed her support, with two stipulations: that the camera at the corner of Third and Warren streets, which she had heard was not working, be fixed (Police Commissioner Gary Graziano confirmed that the camera was working and had been used recently in the investigation of a car crash); and that cameras be placed at other bars as well, "so that Savoia is not blamed for problems they are not responsible for." Responding to Garriga's second stipulation, Graziano declared, "If the Council approves the money, I'll put up fifty cameras." His statement was met with applause.

Garriga expressed the opinion that complaints about the Savoia were unfounded and proposed that the complainers get together with Walthour to discuss the situation. She explained that, because she was not on the Police Committee and he was, she was turning the task of organizing and facilitating the conversation over to her fellow Second Ward alderman, Abdus Miah. Unfortunately, when Miah started talking about Garriga's proposal, one Savoia supporter was not shy about complaining that she couldn't understand what he was saying.

Although the Savoia issue seemed to take all the oxygen in the room, other issues of interest and importance were touched on.

Council president Don Moore confirmed that the resolution declaring the sewer separation project a Type II Action would be voted on at the Council's next meeting on June 16. When asked about the status of the EAF (Environmental Assessment Form), which the aldermen took a stab at completing themselves at their May meeting, Moore said they would decide if they wanted to proceed with that on June 16 as well.

An amendment was introduced to Chapter 2-4 B of the city charter, which currently reads: " . . . an appointed person otherwise eligible to hold office under this Charter in accordance with the Public Officers Law of the State of New York need not be an elector of the City so long as such person shall reside in Columbia County within 15 road miles of a boundary of the City of Hudson and be a taxpayer on the real property assessment rolls of the City of Hudson." The amendment would eliminate the requirement, deemed unconstitutional, that appointed officers who do not reside in Hudson be taxpayers in Hudson.

A new local law was proposed that would make it "unlawful for any person or persons to deposit, cast, throw, or discard any substance or material which has been produced or refined by human manufacture or process, trash, refuse, waste, papers, or junk upon any of the streets, alleys, public ways, or public land of the City of Hudson whereby the said streets, alleys, or public land or the premises neighboring thereto would become littered or strewn or rendered unsightly, unclean, foul, or offensive." The impetus for the new statute? The ubiquitous compendium of advertisements distributed by Columbia-Greene Media, Shop & Find.

Audience member Steve Dunn raised the question of reassigning voters to their appropriate wards after errors were discovered in the ward boundaries. As a consequence of these errors, some people who should have been voting in the Fifth Ward have actually been voting in the Third and Fourth wards. Among those affected are Mayor Hallenbeck and his family. Dunn called the situation "a recipe for challenges and litigation during the petitioning process" and suggested that the State Attorney General should weigh in. Democratic Commissioner of Elections Virginia Martin, who was present at the meeting, explained that the reassignment should have been done by June 2, and she was prepared to do it, but Republican Commissioner Jason Nastke was unwilling. The approval of both commissioners is needed to make the changes.

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