News of Significant Interest

The Conservation Advisory Council has its own website, and on that website can now be found a preliminary report by Randall + West, the consultants who have been hired (with grant money) to assist the CAC in doing an open space and natural resources inventory of Hudson. The following excerpt from the report describes the tasks they will undertake:

Randall + West will prepare a graphically enhanced Open Space and Natural Resources Inventory based on conservation and land use planning principles, along with written Conservation Planning Guidelines and an ArcGIS Story Map website. The more informed the community is about the Guidelines, and the more accessible and digestible those planning recommendations are, the more likely the inventory will become a key component in driving development and conservation decisions, especially by local boards and municipal officials. 

The objectives of the Open Space and Natural Resources Inventory and accompanying Conservation Planning Guidelines are to:

• Engage the Hudson community in thinking about and working towards conservation goals;

• Provide the Conservation Advisory Council a publicly accessible online Natural Resources Inventory that identifies and describes prioritization areas for conservation and development consistent with ongoing climate adaptation and resilience efforts;

• Recommend local planning, zoning, environmental quality review, and other policy updates in the Conservation Planning Guidelines; and

• Distribute and present these materials in a manner that promotes greater coordination between municipal boards and agencies and that supports the goal of improved City procedures, plans, and policies in concert with the September 2015 Hofstra Report. 

The Hofstra Report, the product of a study undertaken in the spring of 2015 by eight students from Hofstra Law School, with their professor, Ashira Ostrow, and Eric Lane, dean of the law school, is best remembered for its suggestion that Hudson's weighted voting system was unconstitutional and its recommendation that the City reconsider its apportionment plan, but Weighted Voting was just one of four topics taken up by the study. Another was Conservation Efforts, and it is this section of the report that is referenced by Randall + West. Gossips' comments on what the Hofstra students had to say about conservation can be read here. The entire Hofstra Report is on the City of Hudson website and can be accessed here. 
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