At the inauguration on Sunday, some mayoral appointees were sworn in. Among them was Theresa Joyner, who will be the new chair of the Planning Board. Stephen Steim, who was appointed to the Planning Board by Mayor Kamal Johnson at the beginning of 2020 and became chair in June 2021 when Betsy Gramkow resigned, did not, for health reasons, seek reappointment.
Yesterday, the Register-Star published an article about the inauguration with the headline "Joyner first woman of color to lead planning board." The first paragraphs of the article are of particular interest.
Theresa Joyner was sworn in Sunday as the first woman and first woman of color to lead the city Planning Board . . . .
Joyner said she wants community members to know that the great ability she can bring to her job is availability as the Fair Housing Officer.
"First, I want to make sure that people know we are here and understand the position of Fair Housing Officer," Joyner said.
She plans to visit all of the affordable housing buildings in Hudson to hand out information on how she can be of assistance and will be available Friday afternoons from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Assessor's office at City Hall.
Joyner is actually not the first woman to chair the Planning Board. Up until only six months ago, Betsy Gramkow was chair of the Planning Board, and, if memory serves, Judy Meyer chaired the Planning Board back in the early 2000s. Some clue about how Joyner sees being chair of the Planning Board in relation to her position as Fair Housing Officer may be found in her response to a preliminary presentation in February 2021 by Benchmark Development for the market rate apartment building being considered for the first block of Warren Street. Joyner wanted to know who the tenants of the building would be, explaining, "My biggest concern is the need. Will it benefit the citizens?"
The chair of the Planning Board serves ex officio on the board of HCDPA (Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency) and the IDA (Industrial Development Agency. When Gramkow chaired the Planning Board, she designated John Cody as her proxy to represent the Planning Board on the IDA. That situation continued when Steim took over as chair. It is likely that Joyner will want to serve on the IDA herself.
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I would agree the last thing we need is an apartment building on lower Warren Street. Unfortunately, it sounds like we have another implanted puppet who will oppose anything that is not a low income housing project.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. What this town doesn't need is more low-income housing. It's a drain on already strained resources.
DeleteThe project in question was to be 75-80 market-rate units, which would have provided housing, commercial space, and property tax revenue, unless there was another PILOT handout of the sort Galvan got when they stacked* the deck with cronies and lickspittles.
Delete*are still stacking
The population of Hudson is declining, not increasing, what is the justification or need to build an 80 unit apartment building smack in the middle of Hudson's most historic neighborhood? Why should the city sacrifice the integrity of the neighborhood to satisfy a developers profit motive?
DeleteWhat would make sense would be to rebuild an exact replica of the buildings that were torn down in order to build the junk that is there now. Surely there would be enough housing units within those structures to meet any housing needs. The city should send out a request for proposals for that. Historical recovery, wouldn't that be nice?
I appreciate your enthusiasm for historic preservation, but Hudson is a living town, not a time capsule. Things are going to be built, and new people are going to move here.
DeleteRather than tilting at the windmill of provincialism, it makes sense to ask what kinds of development are best for residents old and new, how they affect infrastructure, what they add to the local economy, and the additional strain they place on social services.
Ms. Joyner deserves thanks just for taking the job!
ReplyDeleteOne detail among many is the hope she’ll agree to finalize an inquiry begun by her predecessors Gramkow and Steim by seeking confirmation from the NYS Office of General Services that OGS has made a final determination concerning ownership of the Colarusso dock and shorefront.
Only an actual determination - rather than OGS’s usual mealy-mouthed slinking away - can clarify our options going forward.
A December 30th letter from Chris Leo of OGS stated merely that a series of recent surveys - first from St. Lawrence Cement, then Holcim, and then the Colarusso company - are all accurate simply because they agree with one another. (I know we’re talking about government bureaucrats, but a reply as thoughtless as that from a notoriously corrupt state government suggests it was coached from above. Mr. Leo is either one crook among many, or an incompetant fool. Take your pick!)
This cat-and-mouse saga with OGS was launched 20 years ago by Don Christensen, Sam Pratt and Peter Jung. At the time, an earlier and more honest generation of OGS staffers reviewed the materials and concluded they’d better get a lawyer! When they hired a title searcher to look for glitches, the work remained unfinished until last year when transcripts were prepared and analyzed of the notoriously difficult to read 19th c. deeds.
Today, 100% of the research is completed. The People’s lands were never granted to Colarusso’s predecessors, thus nearly the entire shoreline and much of the storage yard are state-owned. (Now wouldn’t that solve a lot of the city’s problems?)
The December 30 letter marks two decades that OGS has refused to reexamine the original survey defining the original land grant to a private citizen. By using gimmicks that are increasingly childish, this agency always wriggles away from its duty - even through proven, probative deceit - avoiding acknowledgment of what anyone with any intelligence can readily grasp: that nearly the entire Colarusso dock-and-shoreline was illegally annexed by Elihu Gifford, Charles Alger, et al, in 1869.
There is no Statute of Limitations on the theft of public lands, however willing our corrupt state agencies appear to be to facilitate such theft. (Sounds like a worthy Gossips post which readers will have to request.)
We hope that Ms. Joyner will agree to taking what appears to be the last step in one of Hudson’s longest ongoing inquiries by inquiring whether or not a final determination was actually made in the December 30th letter from OGS.
Well, that would be nice, but somehow I doubt her motivations and performance will be any different from the two inept, unqualified persons who just expired from the IDA. Let's hope for the best.
DeleteHas Laura Margolis been reappointed to the board. I'm readying my letter.
ReplyDeleteLaura Margolis made it clear that she did not wish to be reappointed. As a consequence, there are two openings on the Planning Board--to replace Steve Steim and Margolis. It remains to be seen who will be appointed.
DeleteThank you.
DeleteSeems to me we ought to address the housing question by starting with a survey of the present situation. Let's find out how many people are currently living in some form of subsidized housing before building any more. I don't have any data, but my hunch is that Hudson is already way out of balance in that regard. If the goal is to move existing residents into better quality housing then fine-- but what we should not do is open the doors to another influx of under-privileged individuals ala 1971.
ReplyDeleteIf only reason would prevail and this is what they would do. It makes so much sense, I doubt it will be done. I have a fear that we are returning to the 1970's. Hudson's boom could be it's bust if City Government doesn't improve.
DeleteIt's worth noting that Galvan owns the building at 1st & Warren where the new apartment complex is being proposed. That should mean that the application flies thru the Planning Board easily!
ReplyDeleteAnd if Galvan has their engineering firm, Creighton-Manning, submit a "parking study" to the PB it will be full of false data, the Board will hire the consulting firm ALTA Planning to "review" the parking study, they will find little or nothing wrong with the data (especially if they don't vet the data, as was the case for the Galvan proposal on 7th!), give the "study" their approval and the Board will accept Galvan's "parking study" as accurate and proceed to approve the proposal. B Huston
DeleteYup. That's what happens when palms have been greased.
DeleteNoted.
ReplyDelete