I left tonight's Common Council meeting in utter disbelief. I am in total support of a Senior Center and plans to locate it at the old armory, but the eleventh hour change proposed by the Mayor, and passed at tonight's Council meeting, is fiscally irresponsible. Taxpayers are on the hook for another $100,000 over the next two years--a .5% increase in the city's budget for each year--without any provisions on how it will be spent or audited, when alternatives were presented.You can read the rest here.
The mayor, who we know from John Mason's report in the Register-Star spent the evening not at City Hall but "with his constituents at Providence Hall," responded to Hamilton's message this morning with his own message, in which he defended his position while disparagingly referring to his opponent as "'Tiff'" and "Madame Hamilton." You can read the mayor's statement on his Facebook page or on a new and anonymous blog that debuted this morning, which takes as its title from one of Alderman "Doc" Donahue's more memorable utterances: Good night, Tim. Don't come back again. Gossips recommends reading the mayor's statement on the blog, because there you can also read Fourth Ward alderman candidate Rich Volo's take on the current situation surrounding the senior center: "Don't you want your grandmother to have a car?"
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Gossips Note: The mayor seems to have removed his statement from his Facebook page, so now the blog is the only place where it can be read: Good night, Tim. Don't come back again.
Suitably Mayoral, Ms. Hamilton. Well said.
ReplyDeleteTaxpayers dollars are going to support a private enterprise.
ReplyDeleteThe armory belongs to Galvan - not us the citizens of Hudson.
Thats the issue.
i wish my tax increase from the school board was for only two years. did everyone forget that, or are we using foreign currency to pay that one?
ReplyDeleteSusan Troy submitted this comment about the senior center:
ReplyDeleteIt's a specious argument that the City has never committed any money to a Senior Center.
Immediately post Crosswinds, the then-mayor and his administration had every opportunity to commit the necessary funds to a Senior Center, move forward on an aggressive schedule, AND deal transparently with a developer who would not held Hudson hostage.
And most interestingly, imagine the positive public relations that would have resulted then.
So, a policy win, a personal win for the Seniors, and a political win. A triple. But still, a no go.
A note about programming: that was very much a part of the discussion at that time. In fact, the Washington Irving Center in Catskill was considered a great example to use, when crafting the on -paper basics of a center: board governance, funding streams, staffing and scheduling, and of course, programming.
This argument that suddenly, right now, today (well, two days ago), decisions had to be made because Hudson's Seniors have been denied a place of their own for so long, well, that begs a very specific two-part question:
Who denied the Seniors a Senior Center, and exactly why?