The Hudson Housing Authority Board of Commissioners meets today at 6:00 p.m. As Gossips has noted in the past, this meeting, which takes place on Zoom, is typically not accessible to the public. Today, things are different. The information needed to join the Zoom meeting was published this morning on the City of Hudson website.
This change may have come about because, at the HCDPA meeting yesterday morning, John Kane complained that the public did not have access to HHA meetings. Rebecca Wolff, who is on the HHA board as well as the HCDPA board, said she was not aware of this and committed to making HHA Zoom meetings available to the public. She obviously has followed through.
My thanks to Rebecca if she opened this meeting to public participation--I only regret the late notice and that I could not participate. Let's hope that this signals a new appreciation for the housing issue in Hudson. Let's hope the recent dust-ups on housing -- the Galvan PILOT withdrawal and the time-wasting drum beating on Short Term Rentals -- will sober the Johnson administration up on the realities of democracy and transparency with regard to housing. It is a huge issue and should not be turned over to partisan plutocrats to orchestrate. The most important thing for Mayor Johnson to do is appoint a Housing Commissioner. Like the Police Commissioner, the Youth Commissioner, Fire Commissioner, Aging Commissioner.... etc. the Mayor needs to show the citizens and taxpayers of Hudson that he cares about the outlandish housing costs--from property assessments and warehousing -- by appointing an independent specialist, removed from the petty politics of the Common Council, to take charge of this city-wide challenge. C'mon Mayor Johnson. Why are you holding out on housing?
ReplyDeleteActually if you compare the cost of renting an apartment in Hudson to other cities nearby, Kingston, Woodstock, Saugerties, etc, the cost of housing here is not outlandish, the rental costs are really right in line with the other areas. It is actually a nicer place to live, so you could say it is a bargain. Seems to me the city would be better off administrating and staying out of the social engineering business. Expanding government, creating a larger bureaucracy, is not a great idea during a pandemic and in the midst of an economic crisis. What are all these commissioners actually doing anyway? You probably could get rid of all of them and things would continue to run well on their own. In fact, I bet you could shut down most of the city government and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. So long as the people maintaining the garbage and roads, and the police get paid. Now is a good time to trim the fat, lighten the load, reduce bureaucracy and lower taxes.
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