The agenda for tomorrow's Planning Board meeting has been published, and it turns out that Gossips was wrong. The plans for the boutique hotel in the former Elks Lodge is not on the agenda. Instead Colarusso's quest for conditional use permits is back before the board after an extended hiatus during which Colarusso sued the Planning Board for making a positive declaration in the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) process in its review of Colarusso's application for conditional use permits for its operations at the river and in the City of Hudson.
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| Photo: Our Hudson Waterfront |
The Truck Diversion Project proposes to improve the surface of the existing Causeway with a two-lane haul road, so that trucks can be diverted from the City streets and so that the low-lying service road can be abandoned and restored to wetland vegetation.
It's not clear where that language came from. What is clear is that it is meant to appeal to those people who just want to see the gravel trucks off the city streets without considering the consequences for the waterfront of Colarusso's plans and aspirations.
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| Photo: Linda Mussmann |
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| Photo: Linda Mussmann |
The Planning Board meeting takes place tomorrow, Tuesday, August 8, at 6:00 p.m., in person at the Central Fire Station, 77 North Seventh Street, and on Zoom. Click here to join the meeting remotely.
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OMG, what kind of person reframed the Colarusso proposal this way? Whoever you are, you're perfidious! You're deaf (or dead) to your own conscience. As a public servant you're treacherous and shouldn't have anything to do with any government.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Colarusso proposal is for a NEW road in a NEW place, and not for the improvement of an "existing" road. Your carefully chosen words betray your purpose, which is to reinforce and then exploit people's ignorance.
That's ugly enough, but it pales before the false choice you offer between the proposal's "diverted" truck traffic versus continued trucks in the lower city. What a bald-faced lie! It's a variation of the same fake Environmental Justice "choice" we've heard for years, rather than the legitimate EJ argument to relocate the gravel trucks by implementing the City's adopted waterfront program (LWRP, 2008-2011).
When Colarusso bought the property in 2014 it was well aware of the City's LWRP and the attending zoning amendments. These restrictions in Local Law were plain as day, yet the landowner who bought into these new laws soon chose to ignore them. Colarusso even sued the City over the Zoning Amendments and lost in court. (Meanwhile, the company and its henchmen always frame the losses as wins, a tactic made easier by the continued support of local officials and Agenda-writers who pursue their own private advantage.)
Were it not for the serial scoundrels in City Hall, the residents who elected them along with their usually unaccountable attorneys would be informed by more honest politicians that the Planning Board, by ordering the next step in the SEQRA process, was merely following the explicit recommendation of the 2011 SEQRA Findings Statement (NB. the Findings Statement is the most legally consequential component of every full SEQRA review, coming at the conclusion of the process).
Don't allow anyone to mischaracterize the years-long waterfront process, or the instructions the 2011 Common Council penned to future Planning Boards. And when does lying portend anything positive anyway? Whoever authored the Planning Board's latest Agenda is a shameless liar and should be smoked out and then run out of City government. For all we know they are taking bribes, even from supporters who are not named Colarusso.
Residents and city officials have a duty to understand the City's adopted LWRP, and to build on it if necessary. That's what progress looks like. Decisions affecting the future of the waterfront should not be built on lies.
That description of the Colarusso proposition is an abomination. It was clearly written by the applicant to make the application seem benign. Heaven help us if the attorney for the Planning Board crafted that nonsense. Arghhh....
ReplyDeleteWill CSX be the next target?
ReplyDeleteHuh? Don't think CSX is running trucks through town trying to pressure the city into turning its waterfront into a private industrial park. Try sticking to the issue, Lew, instead of dropping in a one-sentence straw man with zero backup.
DeleteCSX ought to be concerned about Colarusso. When the application for a gravel dump and new road was submitted in 2016, the anticipated volume of truck traffic was 2,000 vehicles a year. The company is now threatening a 750% increase over that, and also is telling our Planning Board that they have no authority to impose ANY limit on the number of trucks crossing the rails at Broad St.
ReplyDelete