Because of concerns, given the increase in transmission of COVID-19 in Columbia County, that meeting in person at City Hall might not be safe, the Planning Board is holding its workshop on the Colarusso application this evening on Zoom. Click here to access the meeting, which begins at 6:00 p.m.
Gossips has been informed that, to avoid being in violation of open meetings law, there will not a quorum at the meeting. Since a quorum is four members, it seems there will only be three Planning Board members participating in the workshop.
Carole, if it is now sub-quorum does that mean the public can NOT tune in?
ReplyDeleteNo. It only means that they cannot have a vote or take any action. The public can still access the meeting, which is why Planning Board chair Stephen Steim made sure I had the link to the meeting so I could publish it and spread the word on Gossips.
DeleteAnd yet the answers reached earlier this evening by the sub-quorum on environmental impacts - some of them very ill-considered answers - will be thought of as work already accomplished the next time the entire board meets.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, years of conservation work was disregarded at EAF Question 7, "Impacts on Plants and Animals." The Chairman rapidly dismissed one question after another while the others just sat and listened.
So while it's true the sub-quorum was prevented from committing any actions for now, in retrospect we'll see that they actually did achieve something.
Unless these same questions are reexamined by the full Board, then the sub-quorum effectively took an action.
Personally, I think they had no business discussing SEQRA matters without a quorum.
The meeting's confusion about the correct acreage was amusing but also frustrating to watch.
ReplyDeleteAt last the question was put to rest when the Planning Board engineer opted for the least area covered by the environmental review (what a surprise), based on a misplaced trust in the honesty of the applicant and on the applicant's surveyors' credentials.
But unless you've been living under a rock, everyone has known for years that the deed survey is incorrect. Not knowing this, but preceding anyway, is the danger of holding sub-quorum meetings.
The faulty survey was discussed at length with several previous Planning Board members, including ex-Chairman Gramkow, none of whom were present last night.
The same matter is being raised at the county level by Supervisor Sterling, though her inquiry involves the eccentric move by the supervisors in the 1970s to uncouple the tax boundaries from the municipal boundary. (This is why LaFarge-Holcim which owns land in Hudson pays no city taxes!)
What the surveyors did for Colarusso Ventures was to re-identify the two sets of boundaries, but not by recognizing the actual city limit within which the Planning Board is obligated to submit every square inch to environmental review (and NOT JUST THE DOCK!).
Whether by ineptitude or crookedness, the surveyors invented a new municipal boundary at the 1970s-configured tax boundary. This new boundary sits acres inside of the actual city limit.
Interestingly, in his various site plans the applicant's engineer Pat Prendergast recorded the correct city limit. He was even sitting in on last night's meeting, but why should he do the Planning Board's work for them?
If the Planning Board is too inexperienced to comprehend this applicant's usual sleight-of-hand, then they're ever in danger of following their eagle-scout-engineer's (or their own inept lawyer's) usual horrible advice.
Who doesn't know these things? What's wrong with this place? Seriously people, wake up!
This is what you get with "sub-quorums." And don't tell me they didn't take any "actions." All of their decisions will be acted upon in future, as if it was "work done."
The whole meeting should be deleted.
This is how a cunning applicant wears down a Planning Board which has little or no memory.
ReplyDeleteMiners have the slowest, most patient strategies of all. They'll plan for something decades out.
This applicant is ready to wait until there isn't a single board member left with any idea why the South Bay was rezoned in 2011.
Notice how, last night, the board's engineer and lawyer both introduced the idea that the existing private road, the causeway, can only be used "one way."
Where did they get that? It's not in any law or any policy, and after the zoning was amended the previous owner used it in two directions of travel.
So they made it up!! And these people are on the city's side!!
During the meeting the lawyer corrected herself, but the board's engineer continued to reference "the one-way road."
Due to the significance of the claim which it cannot be understated is profound, this invention of a one-way road amounts to malpractice by our own advisors.
But this applicant is willing to wait until there's nobody left on the board to correct such self-goals.
It's a good question: Is there anyone now serving on the Planning Board who wouldn't have known the one-way claim was a dangerous fabrication of THEIR OWN LAWYER AND ENGINEER?
Planning Board, please fire these inept fools! By now, everyone assumes that one or both are committed to the applicant and not to the City of Hudson.
For this "one-way" b.s. alone, which you'll see your engineer will not be not able to stop repeating, fire them both!
Of course it is total BS, they can use cell phones or radios to manage back and forth trips. It is all BS to accommodate a business that is a public nuisance and no longer conforms to the waterfront use or future plans. It is simply a holdout from a bygone industrial era that needs to be eliminated. The city could easily ban the large trucks from city streets with a simple vote. Our leaders just don't seem to have the stomach for it.
DeleteThat's right P. Winslow, the company can use cell phones or radios or some other signaling system to coordinate their truck trips across the single-lane South Bay causeway. They'll just have to take turns going back and forth even if that's inconvenient.
DeleteOne finds a similar situation across the river in Cementon, around where the Quarry Road joins Rte. 9W. In that situation, everyone must wait their turn at a light to use what's essentially a one-lane road. It's not a big deal. In Hudson, though, only gravel trucks would have to wait to take turns on the company's private road. How is that such a big deal?
To make this happen (which, after all, was the implication of the 2011 waterfront planning), I agree that the city should stop diddling around and get every truck that's not making a local delivery off the streets west of 3rd street, which is the state truck route. That would force the mining company/Planning Board applicant to use its own private road in two directions of travel.
Personally, though, I wouldn't wish to "eliminate" the shipping of Becraft Mountain's excellent mining products.
In my view it's not the industry itself which is the holdout (after all, everyone in Columbia County depends on these very mining products for safer road surfaces), but the routine skewing of correct and codified procedures at possible every opportunity with the purpose of defrauding city residents.
It's bad enough when a private enterprise does it, but in Hudson this is how our own trained experts conduct themselves all the time, and really almost continuously.
The Planning Board's lawyer and engineer seem to have no idea why and how the Core Riverfront Zoning District came about. It's all well-documented, as are the interests of city residents in the waterfront program.
But here we have a city engineer who insists that the private causeway road is "one-way." Sheer ignorance! (While I'm listening to these meetings I'm always wondering, why is he speaking again?)
In another example from last night which I haven't mentioned, Ms. Polidoro made an erroneous distinction between "uses" as a nouns and "uses" as verbs. She believes, incorrectly, that the conditional uses referred to in the Zoning Code are only verbs, which is to say the uses which various infrastructure are put to.
She's wrong. And knowing this particular attorney, as we all now do, she's wrong in favor of the applicant, as usual.
The Zoning Code's "uses" include nouns and verbs, which is to say the private road itself and also what you do on it.
This latest error in law is why every Hudson resident should join me in screaming at the Planning Board, FIRE HER!! Now!!
And for good measure fire the engineer too.
Hudson is changing rapidly though. I don't see people caring, or using their minds the way they used to do, to care for the waterfront. Meanwhile the miners just wait. And they'll get what they want in the end, too, because we have all become so stupid.
With Amtrak getting $66 billion in the current infrastructure bill, we should expect aggressive moves very soon to prohibit public access to the shared right-of-way "access road" next to the Colarusso waterfront property. (North Bay is a different story.)
ReplyDeleteIt will require a strong defense by the City to demonstrate our deeded access rights, but do we have that kind of resolve to defend ourselves? It's a political question, one immediately enfeebled by the sort of counsel we're now all-too accustomed to hearing.
Earlier this year, attorney Polidoro offered her usual bad advice to the Planning Board in ignorance of these same deeded rights. Together with the board's engineer, they'd put together a totally unnecessary compromise proposal to meet the applicant halfway. In reality, our extant access rights showed they were prepared to give away something for no reason at all!
When the deeded evidence was brought to Ms. Polidoro's attention by Chairman Gramkow, the attorney and engineer went silent and the complex proposal quietly disappeared.
It's high time to tally up our advisors' string of errors - they're not going to do it for us! - and to then ask why 100% of these errors favored the interests of the applicant? Think about that: every single error in a parade of errors was contrary to the legal rights of residents. (Again, think about that!)
This exercise would alert us to the appalling and ongoing advice we should expect into the future, and would be very good practice for what's coming down the pike next (Amtrak).