Virtual Meetings in the Week Ahead
The Capital Region is on track to begin Phase Two of the reopening by midweek, but for the foreseeable future, public meetings are still happening virtually. Here are the meetings scheduled for this week.
- On Monday, June 1, the HDC Emergency Business Task Force holds a meeting of the full committee at 3:00 p.m. Click here to access the meeting. The meeting ID is 884 8032 6330; the password is 658221
- On Tuesday, June 2, the HDC Emergency Cultural Task Force holds its weekly meeting at 3:00 p.m. Click here to access the meeting. The meeting ID is 972 7312 5560; the password is 009933.
Update: Today's meeting of the HDC Cultural Task Force was been canceled in recognition of Blackout Tuesday.
- Also on Tuesday, June 2, the regular monthly meeting of the Conservation Advisory Council is scheduled to take place at 6:00 p.m. It is not known if the meeting will take place or how the public can access the meeting if it does happen.
- Of particular interest on Tuesday, June 2, the HCSD Board of Education continues its public hearing on the $50.7 million budget proposed for 2020-2021. Click here for information on participating in the meeting.
- On Wednesday, June 3, the DRI Committee meeting takes place at 2:30 p.m. This meeting takes place as a conference call, and there is no public access to the meeting.
- In the evening on Wednesday, June 3, there are two Common Council committee meetings. The Youth, Education, Seniors, and Recreation Committee meets at 5:30 p.m., and the Housing and Transportation Committee meets at 6:45 p.m. Before the meetings begin, the information needed to access the meetings should be available here, on the city calendar.
- On Thursday, June 4, the HDC Emergency Hospitality Task Force meets at 3:00 p.m. Click here to access the meeting. The meeting ID is 857 3559 2807; the password is 917586.
Update: The meeting of the HDC Emergency Hospitality Task Force has been canceled.
- Also on Thursday, June 4, the Tourism Board meets at 5:00 p.m. Click here to access the meeting. The meeting ID is 856 6179 9519; the password is HudTour.
If the DRI Committee is barring public participation even from the listen-only feature of Wednesday’s conference call, then what does that tell you?
ReplyDeleteJudging from past meeting notes, the process is now rife with misguided opinions, misinformation, and outright manipulation.
Add to that the apparent attitude of the Committee members, that no one can force upon them any degree of public participation.
It seems the Committee’s worst attitudes and shoddiest contributions issue from the mere appointees among the members, which makes the elected members look complacent, and even complicit, with the poor behavior of their seemingly invulnerable colleagues.
But politicians who forget who they're meant to serve are frequently remembered as being undeserving.
Couldn't agree more. I was on the first "housing" DRI committee (appointed by Mayor Tiffany Hamilton), but quit (in the Rector regime) when the then-new Mayor refused to allow committee members to use email to communicate or take minutes of the meetings.... I see the Committee continues it's non-transparency tradition.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to hear about former incarnations of the DRI Committee.
DeleteI've observed that the notorious lack of continuity between different phases of the Committee gives each of its iterations fresh opportunities to blame preceding Committees or DRI managers.
The current Committee may have a valid gripe though if, as they claim, the previous administration was not forthcoming with many of the critical DRI documents.
Is that true or not, who knows?
The problem isn't that the people of Hudson aren't demanding transparency from our city government. The problem is Michael Chameides and Cheryl Roberts don't care. They are going to deliver the minimum amount of transparency possible under the law while paying lip service to progressive constituents, who should be paying more attention to what's going on behind the curtain.
ReplyDeleteI wrote to the Office of the Mayor this morning begging for help to "re-open the DRI process to allow for public participation."
DeleteAs far as the award for the shacks is concerned, the DRI Committee has everything horribly backwards. Their effort is so inefficient that it's a sheer waste of time. They aren't even looking at the applicable sections of the Code, and that's the fault of the Committee's attorney.
The attorney, of course, is Cheryl Roberts.
ReplyDeleteThe CAC meeting will happen at 6:00PM as scheduled and the proceeds will be live streamed on WGXC.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to learn about the DRI Committee, go to http://www.cityofhudson.org/business/dri_documents.php.
ReplyDeleteThere you can find notes for every DRI Committee meeting. There are summaries for 2019 as well - which I added to the city website even though it precedes my time on the committee. You can also view all the documents the committee generates and reviews. And you also can subscribe to get notifications by email.
If you want to participate and give feedback, please contact me and/or the entire committee. The Committee has held a few official public comment periods in 2020 for feedback prior to key milestone decisions. In addition, I’m always open for feedback. For example, Timothy O’Connor has been really engaged with the fishing village project and I’ve exchanged over 40 emails with him over the past two months. We’ve also included documents he shared in the official documents for the project. Every meeting summary has committee members’ contact information, so please reach out if you have a comment.
The trouble is, by the time the public sees the DRI meeting notes and takes the time to clarify the DRI members' confusions the damage done to any proposal is enormous.
DeleteIn the May 20 meeting notes for the Fishing Village proposal, members actually considered ditching the project and using the money for other proposals.
But if any DRI Committee member had asked about the applicable zoning (which, incidentally, was never discussed before then!), members would have realized at once that talk of ditching the project was inappropriate, and maybe even fishy.
Genuine public participation in real time serves a useful purpose.
The purpose of Open Meetings Laws, and I'm disappointed that I have to explain this to someone who is both an elected official and a city employee, is to give the public real-time access to the inner workings of government. Michael Chameides takes notes on the meetings and posts them (when convenient), so Michael Chameides acts as a gatekeeper of information, deciding what we see and when we see it. Michael Chameides takes questions from the public, deciding which questions to share to the DRI group, if the question is shared at all, and answers privately, so we can't easily see who is asking questions or how they are being answered. The idea is to give power to members of the public, not a bureaucrat with a rather spotty history in terms of integrity.
DeleteThe rest of the City is getting on board with teleconferencing meetings. I'm not sure why the mayor's aide thinks the DRI process should be immune; it certainly does the mayor's office no favors in terms of public perception. If doing the minimum required under the law is the maximum Chameides is capable of, he's not adequately serving the people of Hudson.