Thursday, September 16, 2021

Pursuing the Solar Farm

On Monday, at the informal Common Council meeting, Public Works Commissioner Peter Bujanow presented a revised request for expressions of interest (RFEI) for developing a solar farm on City-owned land off North Second Street. He assured the Council that the revised RFEI does not offer the capped landfill as a site for the solar array. He described the parcel being offered as "near the dog park." 

Although the capped landfill is not the parcel being offered for development, appended to the RFEI is a 21-page report done by the EPA in June 2017 assessing the viability of the capped landfill as a site for solar panels. Alderman John Rosenthal (Fourth Ward) suggested that including this information might be unwise. Bujanow maintained that it was "in the City's best interest to include the data collected in 2017 about the landfill," arguing that "letting them know that someone has identified this area as ripe for development" was a good thing, even though "this area" is not the actual area being offered for development.

The Common Council is expected to vote on issuing the RFEI at its meeting on Tuesday, September 21. In the meantime, the document has been posted on the City of Hudson website, and Council president Tom DePietro is asking for comments from the public. The RFEI can be found here. Comments should be directed to councilpres@cityofhudson.org. 
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2 comments:

  1. unheimlichSeptember 16, 2021 at 4:13 PM

    If in Bujanow's opinion the study is worthy of inclusion, then in everyone else's opinion the prior Memorandum of Understanding for the capped landfill is certainly worth including. That was between the Columbia Land Conservancy, the City of Hudson, and Columbia County.

    But the MoU won't be included because it doesn't fit Bujanow's one-track mind.

    Remind me, where did we get this guy who drives all the way from Kinderhook, and how do we get rid of him?

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  2. unheimlichSeptember 16, 2021 at 5:18 PM

    This is totally disingenuous (p. 4):

    "there has also been interest in developing a network of walking trails in the area."

    In fact, there's a well developed trail plan sponsored by the Columbia Land Conservancy and paid for by all sorts of donors including the county. It was worked out over a period of years, and with the benefit of public participation.

    The reason that neither the City's extant Memorandum of Understanding nor the trail plan are mentioned here is that the proposed site for the solar array in the lot along and west of 2nd Street (nearest the dog park) is also the planned parking lot and entrance to the walking trails in the expensive site design of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners.

    But the public is stupid enough so why mention it, right? (I can attest, our officials were informed of this beforehand.)

    Additionally, don't encourage public access with searchable documents, despite the impression that local government's locked documents are like a raised middle finger to taxpayers.

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