After the resolution had been introduced, John Privitera, attorney for Colarusso, asked to be heard before the vote was taken. He attested that the two historic resources had not been picked up when the Colarusso consultants had used the mapper. He also protested that Ryan Weitz, the board's consulting engineer, the board's former attorneys Andy Howard and Jeff Baker, as well as the board's current counsel, Victoria Polidoro, had all gone on record as saying it was an Unlisted action. He asserted that the resolution was "not in accordance with the regulations."
Nevertheless, the five members of the board present at the time of the vote--Gramkow, Larry Bowne, John Cody, Theresa Joyner, and Laura Margolis--voted unanimously to pass the resolution classifying the conditional use permit as a Type I action.
In other business, the board also voted unanimously to give site plan approval to 502 Union Street, with one condition: that there be no outdoor activity or amplified noise outside after 10:00 p.m.
Bravo, the Planning Board. Justice, for the City of Hudson in this matter, has at least begun.
ReplyDelete"Ab initio." Go Victoria Polidoro! And thanks for the new lingo.
ReplyDeleteIn Ken Dow's winning Response to Mr. Privitera's court petition against the Board, "the Planning Board intends to conduct a SEQRA review for the action consisting of a conditional use permit for the dock operation—THE FIRST AND ONLY SEQRA REVIEW OF SUCH ACTION" [my emphasis].
Mr. Privitera will dig in his heels, but he's supposed to for his client's sake. He's got nothing, though, so we should expect tons of bluster.
Thanks PB, for taking "interested" parties into account. And if the question relating to "supplemental" can wait, then so much the better.
Question: I read this and the legal language defining Type 1. Your reporting is so neutral and objective that I honestly cannot figure out what it means. What is in fact accomplished by defining this dock Colarusso uses as Type 1 ? Does this mean Colarusso can no longer use it? Will the trucks stop going through the city? Or does it mean Colarusso will be obliged to make minor adjustments? O wise ones, please advise
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't mean any of the things you suggest. Classifying the action is just the beginning of the SEQR process.
Delete"The SEQR Handbook" is an invaluable guide for all levels. For instance:
Delete"What is a “Type I” action?
"A Type I action is an action or class of actions that is more likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment than other actions or classes of actions. Type I actions are listed in the statewide SEQR regulations (617.4), or may be listed in any involved agency's SEQR procedures. The Type I list in 617.4 contains numeric thresholds; any actions that will equal or exceed one or more of the thresholds would be classified as Type I."
https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/permits_ej_operations_pdf/seqrhandbook.pdf
But did you see how badly the opposing lawyer wanted it to be an "Unlisted action"?
DeleteIt means something that a Type I action "is more likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment."
And only an Unlisted action can lead to a conditioned negative declaration. The applicant wanted that, too, because of the "tools" our City engineer was praising. Yeah, tools that favor the applicant, that's what he should have said!
Now a CND is not possible. Whew, dodged that bullet too.
yes I read that and as I said I cannot make sense of it
DeleteSo if this project is now beginning to be going through the SEQR process, how will that effect the ongoing trucking of gravel materials through the city streets? Can this process be delayed by legal challenges from Colarusso ?
ReplyDeleteOn another note: I guess I missed it. What are they planning to do with 502 Union?
ReplyDeleteThere has been lots of information about it on Gossips. The Spark of Hudson is converting the building into a community learning center. Among other things, The Spark is involved in Andrew Yang's UBI program in Hudson. Search "502 Union" on this blog to learn more.
DeleteSigne, a Type I is a classification that defines how the Planning Board will proceed with their review. The next step will be for the Board to make a Positive Declaration, which is a determination that there are enough impacts to merit extensive scrutiny. Dust, noise, visuals, economics, etc. will be weighed by the Board. Colarusso has spent 3 years and a lot of money trying to dodge these hurdles (they even tried a lawsuit) but thankfully our Mayor appointed a strong Planning Board that is not willing to be pushed around by the applicant. NY State has a SEQRA handbook online if you want to dig into the nuts and bolts of the process.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your helpful reply. I hope the Planning Board will continue to support the interests of the entire city of Hudson residents and businesses...trucks do not need to barrel through our streets for this business to survive in some way or another.
DeleteTo Signe Adam.
ReplyDelete1.
Although it was only last year that the court agreed the company’s right to operate in Hudson was terminated in January 2017 (read that again!), a SEQRA review isn’t meant to impact an applicant’s ongoing operations. Nor will this SEQRA review reduce the small percentage of trucks on the state truck route in Hudson that haul gravel.
SEQR is not a punishment, but a way to evaluate proposals against state and local environmental standards.
In this case, though, it’s safe to assume that the same applicant who sued the Planning Board already (and lost) will sue the Board again as soon as there’s a final determination. Reaching a final decision (there are lesser, interim decisions) will take time; the process has fixed schedules depending on how it unfolds.
But your evident hurry to get the gravel trucks off city streets is, frankly, unrealistic. You’re also laying yourself open to some notorious propagandists who are only too eager to exploit your impatience.
I can say this because my house is within earshot of the gravel trucks, and for 10 years I’ve worked towards an alternative which everyone can live with. A moderate approach would seek a stable compromise between all interested parties, whereas the extremists on all sides (the current applicant being the most extreme), only perpetuate a controversy which dates to the mid-19th century.
In 2011, residents working with city government and the former property owner agreed on two possible road alternatives which required some measure of sacrifice from everyone (all but one that is - more on this below). That agreement followed a 3-year SEQRA review, though the review announced yesterday won’t take nearly as long.
With one of that earlier review’s two alternatives pretty much impossible today (through the former L&B at 99 S. 3rd Street) the remaining best method we found to reroute the gravel trucks (but only gravel trucks) in a manner acceptable to all was a variation of the current proposal.
2.
ReplyDeleteTo advance that second best alternative produced out of the 2008-2011 SEQRA review the City dutifully amended its Zoning Code in 2011, adding many other Local Laws and policies to accommodate the agreed-upon relief.
Today the most protective of those tailor-made accommodations are a bad fit with the new proposal. The question is, whose problem is that? The new landowner since 2014 knew what it was buying, so I say caveat emptor.
The difference between 2011 and now is that the new landowner and current applicant has reconfigured its predecessor’s compromise in order to profoundly maximize its advantage.
For a handy analogy, think of the behavior of the Chinese communists in the South China Sea. China’s expansion plan is to build whatever it wants and wherever it wants it.
In 2015 the company unilaterally expanded its private road east of Route 9G. In 2016, the site plan for the current proposal offered this non-explanation for the road widening: “Changed road widths to 24’ [on] 11/13/15.” By what right did anyone simply “change” the width of the road? The same engineer’s earlier site plan put the eastern road’s width at 20 feet, but because a two-lane requires a minimum of 24 feet the owner simply widened it!
In 2016 the company built up its dock without planning permission. Does anyone know if the City even imposed the minimum fine of $100? By appealing the CEO’s Order to Remedy (OTR) and then losing that appeal months later before the ZBA, the application which is now before the Planning Board was delayed vis-a-vis the Greenport SEQRA review for the landowner’s proposed road. At the time the OTR was served in January 2017, before all those pointless delays, Greenport still didn’t have a complete application for the road proposal which the applicant now insists, erroneously, the City Planning Board is barred from reviewing. All that for the price of a $100 fine (if it was fined at all), and the cost of a junkyard-dog attorney from Albany. China would grin with envy.
3.
ReplyDeleteBut what about that one interest who sacrificed nothing in 2011?
For anyone who’s now pushing today’s new proposal for a bigger and better private road, it’s only to their advantage to pretend that the former 3-year SEQRA review and its hard-won master plan to reroute gravel trucks never happened.
The Greenport SEQRA review certainly never mentioned it and, incredibly, neither has the City Planning Board nor very many city residents mentioned it in the last four years. There’s only one explanation for a scandal so vast and pervasive – that people are easily fooled.
To get back to that single interest which didn’t sacrifice anything in the great compromise of 2011 (and please don’t underestimate my own goal to rid our streets of trucks), the ever-cynical County Supervisor Linda Mussman continues to fan the flames of impatience and then exploit the resulting unrealistic expectations of her misinformed followers.
In pursuing her single goal with no consideration for anyone else, this demagogic Supervisor misrepresents the case history and her own awful part in it. She skews every fact to serve her simplistic, selfish ends, and readily confuses lay-people who have no comprehension of the required steps involved. She excites division and exploits resentment, hoping to pressure the hard-working volunteers on the City’s Boards and Committees who attempt to balance everyone’s interests and not only hers.
In short, Supervisor Mussman is a menace to sound governance. I’ll eat my hat if she contributes anything useful in the hard work ahead.
Hopefully Signe Adam, you’re not looking for answers from that quarter.
To Signe:
ReplyDeleteReturning to the part of the question about the gravel trucks, let’s be clear about one thing: Saying yes to Colarusso does NOT solve the truck problem.
According to the company’s own documents, gravel trucks are only a small portion of the overall truck traffic on the route along Columbia and Green Streets. So if you stopped gravel trucks tomorrow—which you could do far quicker by simply denying the permit—the bulk of big trucks, many going to Greenport, would legally remain on Hudson’s streets. The only way to actually solve the problem is to end truck traffic on Front and lower Columbia Streets—something within the city’s power to do—and to move the state truck route to highways around the city that were built to handle the traffic.
Colarusso wants the two-lane truckway across our wetlands for a simple reason: the ability to greatly ramp up the volume of gravel shipment at the dock. The resulting noise, dust, danger and disruption will prevent anything positive from happening on the waterfront, from the expansion of desperately needed recreational space to more compatible waterfront development that creates jobs and business opportunities for our people.
The Colarusso proposal, in short, is all downside and no upside for the city of Hudson.
Hudson is like a tropical atoll facing the expansion plans of a powerful hulking neighbor.
DeleteThe bulkhead, the revetment, the widened road, the giant proposed road - like China this landowner fully expected the city to surrender.
It's not for the Planning Board to decide, but I'd like to use the City's bargaining power to revive the 2011 alternative.
But because we aready lost the fixed, nonconforming width of the existing road (thanks a load, NYS DOS!), Hudson will forever be plied with new proposals to build two-lane roads in the South Bay. This case will set a precedent for all those future proposals.
Dkon, I also do not understand why other trucks need to be routed from 9G through Hudson. Unless of course they are making a delivery in the city. Why not take 23 to 9H and continue north ? I know I asked about this issue in the past and I remember the hearing about the road through the wetland area and someone proposed completing a partial road near the courthouse and I guess nothing decisive has happened since........the issue just slowly chugs along from hearing to hearing and regulation to objection and so forth..........how naive I was to imagine there could be any real progress.... thank you for your explanation and response
DeleteIt should be noted that the ever-vigilant Unheimlich observed and reported repairs to the Colarusso dock area some years ago, which is what triggered the present review process.
ReplyDeleteKudos.
DeleteWell gee, thank you very much for that Peter. I'd forgotten that. Cheers!
DeleteAnd I recall spying, in October 2015 in the legal notices, the DEC notification that an application to do so had been deemed complete ... The legals are boring as all get-out to read, but it can be worth it.
DeleteYes VM, that was definitely your doing.
DeleteI remember now you'd spotted it in the notives, without which none of what followed would ever have happened.
I not only my forgot in the story, but I forgot that you had alerted everyone to the occasion of a public comment period.
I was just reading the Responses to those comments today, which were published 10 months after our submissions.
It was in her official Response on behalf of the DEC that Region 4 permitter Trish Gabriel dismissed our claims that almost the entire Colarusso shore is state-owned by inventing the name and date of document the NYS OGS later acknowledged had never existed.
Believe me, I've regularly checked the DEC Notifications ever since, but I forgot it was you who started me doing it.
Wonderful! Glad to have inspired you in that regard! And super glad that you kept your eyes peeled, to such a good end.
DeleteBravo Planning Board. Finally! Thanks Unheimlich for your persistence and Peter for his constant watchdogging eye and all the newcomers who have been persistent in finding out about it. And yes, to the Mayor too. Perhaps we have a handle on it now.
ReplyDelete