Speaking of her priorities, Hamilton mentioned broadband first. She talked at some length about developing a new urban renewal plan, focused on the north side of the city, which would include both commercial development and affordable housing. She also spoke of making updates to the city's zoning, mentioning specifically the amendment already proposed for the R-S-C district.
Also of interest, Hamilton said had formed a working group to address the need to replace the Ferry Street Bridge, was soon to present to the Common Council a proposal for revamping the City website, and intended to hold an open community meeting at North Bay in May to discuss the future of the Furgary Boat Club.
The interview has been archived and can be heard here. It's well worth the hour spent listening to it.
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Also important to make sure that infrastructure can support new business and code requirements. Warren Street water main can not accommodate all the sprinkler systems.
ReplyDeleteBut will a working group for the Ferry Street Bridge consider all of our options? Will it even know how to?
ReplyDeleteThe last administration came up with a design plan which made only the most bumbling reference to the bridge's historical significance. (Are readers aware of any of this?)
My concern is that any new discussion will merely begin where the last choice-limiting decisions left off, with no one asking who the previous decision-makers were or how, or why, they arrived at their conclusions.
In all likelihood, the current working group is comprised of the very people who committed us to the previous design plan, a plan which grew out of the autocratic style of leadership some of us were hoping Hudson was moving beyond.
Who is taking part in the Ferry Street Bridge working group?
If we're to have the same, previous officials continuing their harmful influence regarding the bridge design issue - people who've already proven themselves untrustworthy (to be clear, so far we can only guess at the group's composition) - then we may need a litmus test for the Ferry Street Bridge working group.
If the current group doesn't know the name of the bridge design, where the bridge was fabricated, or whether or how it was altered in its history, then its recommendations will reflect its ignorance about the uniqueness of the structure.
If the group doesn't know everything about design plan of the previous administration - who came up with it, and at the expense of what other design and funding ideas - then its recommendations will reflect the continuing lack of imagination of the people we voted out of government, or who retired.
So in the classic Hudson planning mode, this working group will likely reach conclusions which will have to be torn to bits later on, for lack of imagination, lack of institutional memory, and the possible self-interest of those of its members who were already unilaterally shaping our options years before.
Today, people who are no longer in City government still wish to salvage their broken legacies, the LWRP being another such failure (and for good reason). So who will be involved in all of these working groups in a City which has almost no memory of its most recent disasters? My guess is the same people as always, that's who.